Compact FPGAs Are Becoming Ubiquitous (.PDF Download)

When I was involved in mainframe design, we dealt with logic gates that would be packed a few dozen per chip. Comparable designs now occur within ASICs and FPGAs. These days, designers turn to off-the-shelf, high-performance microcontrollers because they assume that FPGAs are too power-hungry, expensive, and hard to program. This is especially true for embedded FPGAs that are integrated with custom IP (see “11 Myths About Embedded FPGAs” on electronicdesign.com).

FPGA development tools and libraries have improved significantly, providing even novice designers with the ability to construct FPGA designs. Flash FPGAs provide instant-on as well as low power operation.