what is the advantage of Fpga?

[avr_micro]

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.i think we can work with micro's in any applications.is there any project that fpga's can do them and micro's can not?

 

[juripero]

A micro-controller won't have enough processing power in most tele-com applications, especially the datapath. In those applications, one needs direct hardwired logic to process the packets. The only choices are FPGA or ASIC.

 

[yangvic]

FPGA is a customize IC.It can implement most digital logic. BUT CPU perform an operation by instructions.FPGA is more powerful.for instance,you can implement a PCI bridge by FPGA.CPU can not.

 

[delay]

Perhaps the applications you have worked with were cute enough for a micro or a CPLD. You need to be the best judge as to what suffices your need. You might as well use a micro where appropriate. In many cases a micro is probably the best choice depending on speed/cost/ease of development. In such applications using an FPGA might be an overkill. However, in applications that are fairly fixed and use fixed tasks to perform an FPGA is probably a better choice over a micropprocessor/microcontroller such as network protocol handling. An AVR micro is no way near the horse power of an FPGA. Think of FPGA in terms of hardware where you do not want to change things on a regular basis. A micro has too much overhead due to software it runs, it looks for many things. You use software merely to design FPGA, once done the device is pretty fixed and gives you real time processing and speed, a luxury for fastest processors such as ARM and PowerPC.

 

[Aser]

FPGA is excellent to implement the glue logic of the system
of different chips.
It really glues all of them together.
If you design your own mother board
then FPGA implements your chip set including
ports, SDRAM, LCD controllers, etc.
Besides, for example, Virtex PRO FPGA provides PowerPC core(s) and high speed communication ports.
Therefore now you can build your SOC in such a device not to use ASIC.

 

[ME]

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.

 

[ipcore]

No NRE,low volume use

 

[amarnath]

the real advantage oif fpga's are the ease of prototyping ,time to market and no NRE....

 

[cawan]

For me, the advantages of fpga is reconfigurable and strongly flexible. The limitation of microcontroller is not existed.

 

[ashishjindal76]

hi
the advantage of fpga is that u can customise ur process fully without wasting ur resources as what we do in controllers. also that fpga has ability to carry out very very big and complex process. in other words u make ur own processor a special purpose processor not a genral purpose processor. also it can operate at very high clock speeds than to contollers

ashish

 

[springf2000]

when y find you are wrong in design, you donnot worried to layout the board again, you just repair your code

 

[alba800]

It is a matter of time: when the micro is not fast enough, you have to go with hardware. ie super fast filtering, sub-microsecond timing, fast counters, video signals... And here comes the FPGA's: hardware that you can configure to do exactly what you need.

bye

 

[gaonkc]

FPGA can be field programme. But if the power is turn off, the logic will be lose. if you need change some logic in you product. you can easily to change it.

 

[ydao]

hehe, we can work with micro's in any applications. it is true. but mcu cannot meet to everything. many field need high speed parallel processing. telecom/video/...

asic's advantage is the price...

 

[power-twq]

The project on high speed communication protocol can't be

implemented only use microcontroller.

in such case, FPGA and ASIC are needed.

best regards

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.i think we can work with micro's in any applications.is there any project that fpga's can do them and micro's can not?

 

[freeinthewind]

the advantage of FPGA is parrallel processing . so it is widely used in high-speed and real-time processing field .