danishdeshmuk
Advanced Member level 1
What are the industrial applications of FPGAs & Micro-controllers ?
Difference between Microcontroller & FPGA ?
thanks
Difference between Microcontroller & FPGA ?
thanks
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There an infinite number of applications of FPGAs and uCs. Why do you ask?
As far as the differences, one significant difference is that a microcontroller can do only one thing at a time (even though programmers are deluded into thinking they are running multiple, parallel 'threads'), while an FPGA can run multiple processes in parallel.
Microcontrollers generally have a number of dedicated peripheral functions built in (AD & DA conversion; UARTs; timers; etc.) which, contrary to what I just said, can actually be running in parallel with the main microcontroller process. These peripherals can be polled by the main microcontroller process, or generate an interrupt.
An FPGA is, at its elemental level, a bunch of gates and registers that can be connected any way you like. FPGAs can run a LOT faster than microcontrollers, especially considering the parallelism, but it takes more work to develop a particular function. High level functions in an FPGA can be implemented using prepackaged Intellectual Property (IP), saving some work (but costing some money, although many functions are available at no cost). Generally, an FPGA design is done in a language like VHDL or Verilog, although there is a movement towards using C. (I'm a VHDL guy)
These are just a few random thoughts. If you have more specific questions, just ask.
Barry