FPGAs can respond to signals in nanoseconds, talk to directly different peripherals (integrated circuits, SPI, DDR3, SATA, HDMI - whatever). State machines can

FPGAs can respond to signals in nanoseconds, talk to directly different peripherals (integrated circuits, SPI, DDR3, SATA, HDMI - whatever). State machines can "branch" on every clock cycle. GPUs... usually respond in milliseconds. Usually can't talk with anywhere except host across PCIe bus. State machines and branches... uh, yeah, don't do those on a GPU! Maybe tile CPUs will give FPGAs a fight in the future in some market segments. Easy (well, easier than FPGA) programmability and potentially good I/O. Transputer was so amazing back in the day. 30 years ago. Maybe Tilera and such will eventually succeed? Anyways, FPGAs and GPUs are very different beasts.