Why use an FPGA instead of a CPU or GPU?

This is where FPGAs are much better than CPUs (or GPUs, which have to communicate via the CPU). With an FPGA it is feasible to get a latency around or below 1 microsecond, whereas with a CPU a latency smaller than 50 microseconds is already very good. Moreover, the latency of an FPGA is much more deterministic.

Does FPGA have CPU?

The FPGA is a specific silicon designed to implement any digital design, including a CPU (called a soft-core CPU). FPGAs are designed to run multiple digital circuits in parallel.

How much faster is an FPGA?

FPGAs are like ASICs in the sense that they implement a hardware design, but the difference is the hardware design can be changed. The flexibility has a cost, however – the same hardware design will always be much faster (by about 4x) and much cheaper (by about 10x) if made as an ASIC.

Can FPGA be faster than GPU?

The difference between GPU and FPGA performance is not a static factor, but it does depend on the size of the data set. A study by Sanaullah and Herbordt [7] revealed that FPGA can compute small samples of 3D FFT tens of times faster than GPU. The difference is less clear when the data set gets bigger.

How hard is it to learn FPGA programming?

To this day (2013 at the time of this post) FPGAs are still very, very, difficult to learn and teach. There are people who want to learn logic and FPGAs that are turned off of the subject because the barrier to entry is still so high.

Why is FPGA faster?

So, Why can an FPGA be faster than an CPU? In essence it’s because the FPGA uses far fewer abstractions than a CPU, which means the designer works closer to the silicon. He doesn’t pay the costs of all the many abstraction layers which are required for CPUs.

Can I use a processor core as an FPGA?

For that, you can just ignore the processor logic and dump your design into the programmable region to use it as a normal FPGA. As you progress, you can add much higher levels of complexity to your design by bringing in the processor core to directly read and write data in your configurable hardware.

What is SoC based FPGA?

In the context of an FPGA development board, a SOC based system means that the hardware has two components, a sea of programmable logic (the FPGA) and a hard processor core implemented in silicon independent of the programmable FPGA logic.

How many times can an FPGA be programmed in a cycle?

SRAM based FPGAs can be programmed as many times as necessary. There is no limit until the device gets damaged by out-of-spec conditions such as voltage, temperature etc. Certain Flash-based FPGAs may have a very specific max programming cycle endurance.

Are FPGAs more energy-efficient than CPUs?

Although FPGAs are more flexible, they are draining more power, meaning you will need more juice to keep them going as opposed to CPUs which do not pose such a degree of problem in terms of power consumption.