They're not all that much slower. Take a look at http://zedboard.org/ http://zedboard.org/. That's a Cortex A9 dual core proc attached to a hell of a lot of FPG

They're not all that much slower. Take a look at http://zedboard.org/ http://zedboard.org/. That's a Cortex A9 dual core proc attached to a hell of a lot of FPGA fabric. In general, I would expect that the speed of data "out" of an FPGA is going to be slower than the speed of data "in" to an FPGA, as well as being somewhat less data "out." I would expect to pull in a lot of ADC data and then filter and process and etc., only sending on what I absolutely want to keep.