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1) FPGAs are not easy to develop for, and totally different from the skillset of a Photoshop developer. It is not as easy as dreaming up a design and pressing a

1) FPGAs are not easy to develop for, and totally different from the skillset of a Photoshop developer. It is not as easy as dreaming up a design and pressing a button; if you are anywhere close to pushing the envelope it takes expertise & time. 2) GPUs, being purpose-built and mass-marketed, are both much cheaper and much faster. Think of the Ford Fiesta ST vs. a Jeep Wrangler. The Jeep is simple & more reconfigurable, yet is slower and more expensive- for exactly those reasons! 3) GPUs and CPUs compliment eachother well. The only gap is heavily parallel branching code- GPUs are bad at if-statements, CPUs are bad at heavily parallel. But a branch predictor is the key to if-statements, and branch predictors are hard. FPGAs are fundamentally a prototyping tool. Can you think of examples of prototyping tools that eventually broke into the main market, replacing the incumbent product?

aortega 13y ago
>FPGAs are fundamentally a prototyping tool. Can you think of examples of prototyping tools that eventually broke into the main market, replacing the incumbent product? Python
adwn 13y ago
> FPGAs are fundamentally a prototyping tool. FPGAs can be used for prototyping ASICs, but that's by far not their major use-case.
- sliverstorm 13y ago
  What is then? I know they are used alongside PLDs, but I thought PLDs still dominated that use-case.
  - adwn 13y ago
    They are essentially low-volume ASIC replacements. Some applications: - digital signal processing (DSP) - network equipment (modern high-end FPGAs are able to function as 100G Ethernet switches and routers, just connect them to some PHYs and fast DRAM) - systems on chip (SoC): processor, fast DSP, all kinds of IOs, memory controller – all on a single chip - realtime video stream processing For more examples, see http://www.xilinx.com/applications/index.htm http://www.xilinx.com/applications/index.htm

aortega 13y ago

>FPGAs are fundamentally a prototyping tool. Can you think of examples of prototyping tools that eventually broke into the main market, replacing the incumbent product? Python

adwn 13y ago

> FPGAs are fundamentally a prototyping tool. FPGAs can be used for prototyping ASICs, but that's by far not their major use-case.

sliverstorm 13y ago
What is then? I know they are used alongside PLDs, but I thought PLDs still dominated that use-case.
- adwn 13y ago
  They are essentially low-volume ASIC replacements. Some applications: - digital signal processing (DSP) - network equipment (modern high-end FPGAs are able to function as 100G Ethernet switches and routers, just connect them to some PHYs and fast DRAM) - systems on chip (SoC): processor, fast DSP, all kinds of IOs, memory controller – all on a single chip - realtime video stream processing For more examples, see http://www.xilinx.com/applications/index.htm http://www.xilinx.com/applications/index.htm