The significance, advantages and applications of FPGA

1. The significance of FPGA

At the highest level, FPGAs are reprogrammable silicon chips. Using pre-built logic blocks and reprogrammable routing resources, users can configure these chips to implement custom hardware functions without using circuit breadboards or soldering irons. Users develop digital computing tasks in software and compile them into configuration files or bitstreams, which contain information about the interconnection of components. In addition, FPGAs are completely reconfigurable, and when users recompile different circuit configurations, they can immediately present completely new features.

The adoption of FPGA chips in various fields stems from the greatest advantage of FPGAs combining ASICs and processor-based systems. FPGA can provide the speed and stability of hardware timing, field programmable, more flexible and lower cost than AISC. FPGA is executed in parallel and belongs to hardware design. Unlike software designs such as AISC and DSP, the application levels are different, and processing operations do not need to compete for the same resources. Each independent processing task is equipped with a dedicated chip part, which can operate autonomously without being affected by other logic blocks.

2. Advantages of FPGA

(1) IO pin, rich hardware resources

Control input and output (I/O) at the hardware level provides faster response time and specialized functions to meet application requirements. FPGA has rich logic resources to implement various functions. At the same time, FPGA provides high-speed IO, optical fiber, SRIO high-speed serial Line communication and other interfaces.

(2) Short product cycle for FPGA development

FPGA technology provides flexibility and rapid prototyping capabilities. Users can test an idea or concept and complete the verification in hardware without going through the lengthy manufacturing process of custom ASIC design. As a result, users can complete step-by-step modifications and FPGA design iterations within a few hours, eliminating a few weeks of research and development cycles. Commercial off-the-shelf hardware can provide different types of I/O connected to user programmable FPGA chips. The increasing popularity of high-level software tools reduces the difficulty of learning, and each development tool has a corresponding tutorial, easy to use, FPGA provides commonly used IP cores to achieve advanced control and digital signal processing.

(3) Low project development cost

One is the cost of research and development, and the other is the cost of chip manufacturing. The FPGA is flexible in design, realizes customized functions, and can be developed many times, and users can customize hardware functions to realize more product development. System requirements often change, FPGAs can be developed repeatedly, and the cost of developing new requirements is much lower than the cost of customizing AISC.

(4) Stability

Software tools provide a programming environment that is conducive to FPGA development, code writing, and timing constraints. FPGA stability is more reliable than processor systems. For a system often contains multiple layers of abstraction, tasks can be scheduled, resources can be shared among multiple processes, and non-stop scheduling. The driver layer controls hardware resources, while the operating system manages memory and processor bandwidth. For any given processor core, only one instruction can be executed at a time, and the processor-based system is always faced with the risk of strict time-limiting tasks taking over each other. FPGAs do not use an operating system and have deterministic hardware that executes in parallel and focuses on each task, reducing the possibility of stability problems.

(5) Programmability and flexibility

FPGA chips are field-upgradable without the time and expense of redesigning dedicated integrated circuits. For the continuous development of technology, any product will be upgraded. At this time, only the software needs to be developed, the hardware platform does not need to be newly built, the program can be expanded, and the workload is relatively small.

3. The use of FPGA

(1), communications (3G, 4G, 5G R&D)

(2), consumer electronics

(3), video and image processing

(4), vehicle (ETC)

(5), Aerospace and National Defense

(6), ASIC prototype development

(7), test and measurement (measurement instruments)

(8), storage (cloud services, cloud computing)

(9), data security (hardware encryption)

(10), medical electronics,

(11) High-performance computing (supercomputer)

(12), and can be applied in various custom designs.

The above is about the meaning, advantages and application sharing of FPGA, I hope it is helpful to you.