avr_micro said:
Hi.i am a beginer in fpga design.i have worked with microcontrollers and i have found them very usefull.i can not find a topic that fpga's can individually do them.
You can also use FPGA's to emulate your preferred Microcontoller.
For example you can implement an AVR MCU as an IP-core in a small part of the FPGA and still have room for a lot of other things in the FPGA at the same.
The AVR core programmed in an FPGA can run much faster than an original AVR.
Try to go to
www.opencores.com here you can find a lot of free microcontroller IP-cores to program in an FPGA. Then you can compile AVR programs to your FPGA and they would run much faster + you can add all the ports etc. you like.
You could also run Linux or similar on some FPGAs if you want.
Xilinx even have some FPGAs with up to two embedded IBM PowerPC 405 processors on a small "corner" of the FPGA and up to 20 channels 10 Gbps serial ports. PowerPC processors are as the name indicates very powerful, Apple uses PowerPCs in their computers.
Try to look at these two FPGAs:
Virtex-II Pro™: **broken link removed**
Virtex-II Pro™ X Platform FPGAs:
www.xilinx.com/xlnx/xil_prodcat_product.jsp?title=v2p_x
As you can see, FPGAs can be very powerfull, much more powerfull than any microcontroller.