White Paper: Using FPGAs to Improve Embedded Designs

By: Greg Harrison and Earle Foster

Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) are semiconductor devices that are programmed after manufacturing to accomplish application specific functionality. FPGAs experienced rapid technology advancement in the 1990s, and today are found in a vast variety of products ranging from simple consumer items to highly complex military systems.

The heart of the FPGA concept is programmability. This capability provides a virtually limitless choice of possibilities to designers for implementing circuits that would otherwise require many discrete components. The result is a more capable and adaptable design, reduced PCB size, and reduced cost.

In this white paper, we look at the variety of ways FPGAs are used in Sealevel embedded designs.