The FPGA is Field Programmable Gate Array. It is a type of device that is widely used in electronic circuits. FPGAs are semiconductor devices which contain programmable logic blocks and interconnection circuits. It can be programmed or reprogrammed to the required functionality after manufacturing. What you should know about FPGA ?
FPGA is not a software – FPGA is a semiconductor devices not writing a software
FPGA has a lot of bugs – true. When you are planning to work on FPGA, you should know it has a lot of bugs. FPGA board development has a lot of new updation for fixing new bugs
FPGA is not ASIC – you should consider your safety and security.
This feature of FPGA makes it unique from ASIC. Application Specific Integrated Circuits (ASIC) are custom manufactured for specific design task.
A microcontroller is a computer on a chip in which many support devices like RAM, ROM, timers, counters, I/O peripherals are fixed in one IC. In microcontrollers, the chip is designed for a customer and they have to write the software and compile it.
But in FPGA, there is no processor to run the software and the circuit is well designed. An FPGA can be simply configured as simple as an AND gate or a complex as the multi-core processor.
FPGA Architecture
FPGAs are prefabricated silicon chips that can be programmed electrically to implement digital designs. The first static memory based FPGA called SRAM is used for configuring both logic and interconnection using a stream of configuration bits. Today’s modern EPGA contains approximately 3,30,000 logic blocks and around 1,100 inputs and outputs.
The FPGA Architecture consists of three major components
- Programmable Logic Blocks, which implement logic functions
- Programmable Routing (interconnects), which implements functions
- I/O blocks, which are used to make off-chip connections