Anybody knows about FPGAs?

Question

What is the exact difference between reconfigurable and self reconfigurable devices??? Where are FPGAs used?? I did not get the exact idea from google search. Plz help somebody

Answer 1

FPGAs are used in a lot of consumer devices from computers to cell phones, to ipods. Before the price came down, complex logic functions were built into ASICs (Application Specific ICs), but FPGAs are on-par with the cost of ASICs now, in some cases.

Reconfigurable means that a person (technician) can re-program the FPGA logic by connecting a cable to a special connector inside the consumer device (i.e. cell phone), and downloading the new program.

Self reconfigurable, means that the FPGA itself has the power to change its own programming (this is the *wave* of the future).

Some FPGAs are not reconfigurable, they are programmed and that's it. Some FPGAs have their program contained inside a memory chip (EEPROM), while some FPGAs have their program stored in internal memory. When they power-up the first thing they do is upload the program logic from the memory.

Some FPGAs contain whole microprocessors, like the IBM power-PC. These are the kind that are most likely to self-reconfigure themselves.

Answer 2

A field programmable gate array (FPGA) is a semiconductor device containing programmable logic components and programmable interconnects. The programmable logic components can be programmed to duplicate the functionality of basic logic gates such as AND, OR, XOR, NOT or more complex combinational functions such as decoders or simple math functions. In most FPGAs, these programmable logic components (or logic blocks, in FPGA parlance) also include memory elements, which may be simple flip-flops or more complete blocks of memories.

A hierarchy of programmable interconnects allows the logic blocks of an FPGA to be interconnected as needed by the system designer, somewhat like a one-chip programmable breadboard. These logic blocks and interconnects can be programmed after the manufacturing process by the customer/designer (hence the term "field programmable", i.e. programmable in the field) so that the FPGA can perform whatever logical function is needed.

FPGAs are generally slower than their application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) counterparts, can't handle as complex a design, and draw more power. However, they have several advantages such as a shorter time to market, ability to re-program in the field to fix bugs, and lower non-recurring engineering costs. Vendors can sell cheaper, less flexible versions of their FPGAs which cannot be modified after the design is committed. The development of these designs is made on regular FPGAs and then migrated into a fixed version that more resembles an ASIC. Complex programmable logic devices, or CPLDs, are another alternative.

Applications of FPGAs include DSP, software-defined radio, aerospace and defense systems, ASIC prototyping, medical imaging, computer vision, speech recognition, cryptography, bioinformatics, computer hardware emulation and a growing range of other areas. FPGAs originally began as competitors to CPLDs and competed in a similar space, that of glue logic for PCBs. As their size, capabilities, and speed increased, they began to take over larger and larger functions to the state where some are now marketed as full systems on chips (SOC).

FPGAs especially find applications in any area or algorithm that can make use of the massive parallelism offered by their architecture. One such area is code breaking, in particular brute-force attack, of cryptographic algorithms.

Answer 3

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Answer 4

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