What can FPGAs be used for?

Uses for FPGAs cover a wide range of areas—from equipment for video and imaging, to circuitry for computer, auto, aerospace, and military applications, in addition to electronics for specialized processing and more.

How do you simulate a FPGA board?

The best way to do this is to write a testbench (hardware speak for test code) that tests your design, and run it in a simulator (such as ModelSim which comes bundled with Altera’s tools). If your design works as expected when tested with your testbench in simulation, then your design would work on an FPGA!

Do computers have FPGAs?

Originally Answered: do modern computers contain FPGAs? General computers: no. For example, you might put an optimised search algorithm or graph processing algorithm into hardware instead of running it in SW on the CPU.

What are the different types of FPGA based on architecture?

The three basic types of programmable elements for an FPGA are static RAM, anti-fuses, and flash EPROM.

• Generic FPGA architecture.
• FPGA Configurable logic block (CLB) (courtesy of Xilinx).
• FPGA Configurable I/O block (courtesy of Xilinx).
• FPGA programmable interconnect (courtesy of Xilinx).

What is an example of FPGA in HPC?

A good example of FPGA use is high-speed search: Microsoft is using FPGAs in its data centers to run Bing search algorithms. The FPGA can change to support new algorithms as they are created. If needs change, the design can be repurposed to run simulation or modeling routines in an HPC application.

What programming languages are used in FPGA design?

The designs running on FPGAs are mainly coded using Hardware Description Languages (HDL) such as Verilog, VHDL or SystemVerilog. These three are the most popular languages although there are many more such as SystemC, Migen, MyHDL, Chisel, SpinalHDL, MATLAB etc which are more-higher level than the basic ones listed before.

What is an FPGA-based design?

An FPGA-based design begins by defining the required computing tasks in the development tool, then compiling them into a configuration file that contains information on how to hook up the CLBs and other modules.

What is the difference between hard IP and FPGA?

Hard IP blocks gain performance at the expense of reconfigurability. At the high end, the FPGA product family includes complex system-on-chip (SoC) parts that integrate the FPGA architecture, hard IP and a microprocessor CPU core into a single component.