Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA)

Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA) processors are a new computing architecture that is under development since the early '90s. In general, the computing core of an FPGA consists of a matrix of highly complex reprogrammable logic ICs: Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA). FPGA processors change the view on algorithmic problem solving and have the advantage of being extremely powerful for many applications. Widely used computer architectures have a fixed central processing unit (CPU) operating on data stored in a memory. Programs determine the sequence of single instructions executed by the CPU. This is a disadvantage for algorithms that can be executed in parallel. In contrast, FPGA computers have no given processor structure but offer large amounts of logic gates, registers, RAM, and routing resources. These can be used for performing logical and arithmetical operations, for variable storage, and to transfer data between different parts of the system. Programs do not determine the sequence of execution but the logical structure of the reconfigurable machine. Therefore, algorithms are not only executable in parallel but are executed using a minimum amount of hardware. Typically, thousands of operations can be performed in parallel on an FPGA computer during every clock cycle. Though the clock speed of FPGAs (20-80MHz) is lower than of current RISC systems (100-500MHz), the resulting speedup can be extremely high: in many applications like image processing, artificial neural networks, data encryption, or string processing, speedups between 100 and 1000 have been reported.