FPGA

FPGA

Introduction

An FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array) is a type of programmable chip that is designed to behave in just about a way to do what you wish. The FPGA must be configured before it is used. The configuration process is very easy and similar to the programming of computer, except that instead of making a software program behave a certain way on a computer, you're making a chip behave a certain way. Indeed, most people program their FPGAs with a language that looks similar to a typical computer programming language. The two common HDLs (Hardware Description Languages) in the world are Verilog and VHDL (VHSIC (Very High Speed Integrated Circuit) Hardware Description Language). The major thing that makes FPGAs interesting is that they are so powerful and versatile that you can make a whole CPU out of them.

Brief history of FPGA Technology

The history of Field programming Gate Array (FPGA) starts as complex programmable logic devices (CPLDs) in early mid of era 1980's. Mr. Ross Freeman, the co-founder of Xilinx, invented this technology of field programmable gate array in 1984. Both FPGA and CPLD's include a very large number of elements that are called programmable logic elements. The density of CPLD logic gates ranges from the several thousands to tens of thousands, while FPGA's on the other side offers range from tens of thousands to millions of logic gates.

The dominated development of the first Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) was done and launched in 1985 by the same company Xilinx; however the number of gates available on the chip was very limited or in the low thousands and this was not impressive on at the time as it can't meet requirements of designer. After realizing the limitations of PLDs and PROM's, the United States Naval department of warfare surface starts a project to design a computer with gates that can be reprogrammed and try to develop 600,000 gates this time. The patent for this developed technology was given in year 1992. After this event, the FPGA career rise in market and it is started to appear in networking and telecoms equipment initially, and then later in consumer and automotive applications. Finally, in year 1997, an algorithm is developed by a researcher at the University of Sussex that adapts FPGA, by creating evolvable hardware for it.

Size of FPGA Technology market

The size of FPGA technology market is very low and depressive during its establishment. But as it grows and as new features of security and interaction with the outer devices increased, it also affects the market size of FPGA. Now FPGA has a very effective market as clearly observes from table 1 available in the heading of mass production of FPGA. Same thing is quoted by Standaert, the power consumption of FPGA is the most dominant hurdle in size of its market, who takes it down and gets the market (Standaert S. B., 2004, P 11).

After considering the unique features of FPGA like flexibility and security, world professionals start using it many applications ...