Design
space applications. World over, many such
The programmability of FPGAs brings
applications are being developed using arrays of
FPGAs. They have also been finding their way
with it certain overheads. Significant
into applications never imagined possible earlier,
like, military, aerospace, Radar, satellites and
inefficiencies include speed, area and
terrestrial radio, enabling the domain experts to
build highly customized and programmable
power consumption compared to
solutions.
Many biological applications that require
ASICs designed on a similar
extensive parallel computation, such as, gene
sequence analysis, structural genomics, drug
technology node. The FPGA industry
discovery and imaging technologies in medical
diagnosis field are increasingly migrating
is no doubt focusing on these critical
towards FPGA based implementations for
analysis and acceleration.
issues and it is important that
Most FPGAs can operate at high
frequencies, enabling the desired applications to
they continue this effort
run at speed. This ability has made possible the
verification of complex system level IPs at a
considerably low cost and to run actual software
on applications that use such IPs. This has
Emerging Applications considerably reduced the usual headache faced
FPGAs have ruled the communication and by IP vendors to prove their IPs in silicon and has
networking segments from the time they become an accepted practice in the industry.
26
emerged. Their use was restricted to these Suffice to say that FPGAs are finding acceptance
segments, due to rapid changes in standards in a wide variety of applications!
www
and better immunity to cost and power. But the
.eur dotcom bubble burst hit these segments very Challenges
oasiasemiconductor
hard and provided an opportunity for the FPGA While FPGAs have made considerable strides in
vendors to expand into other segments. This terms of technological advancements and design
would not have happened without the wins, they are not without issues and challenges.
technological advances that FPGAs adopted. As noted earlier, FPGAs are no longer the
FPGAs have found their way into broadcast, choice of only hardware engineers. This implies
audio/ video segments, consumer appliances that the design tools will have to evolve to make
.com
and gadgets, mission critical applications like life easy for engineers, who are rarely digital
medical electronics, displays, industrial systems, designers. A push towards higher levels of
test and measurement and a host of others. abstraction is increasingly becoming a necessity.
square4
Issue I 2009
Emerging wireless applications like WiMax, Since the overall revenues from the FPGA or the
Pico/Femtocell base stations and the 3G Programmable Logic sector is far less compared
technologies and beyond face many challenges. to the ASIC market, EDA vendors continue their
They require complex signal processing and focus on ASICs. This will impact further
radios like Software Defined Radios (SDR), have penetration of FPGAs. The programmability of
stringent power requirements and need to be FPGAs brings with it certain overheads.
extremely flexible since the standards and Significant inefficiencies include speed, area and
deployment are still evolving. FPGAs have power consumption compared to ASICs
become the primary choice for such designed on a similar technology node. The
applications. Software and standard processor FPGA industry is no doubt focusing on these
based solutions won’t fit the needs here because critical issues and it is important that they
of the large number of computations and continue this effort. With various environmental
manipulations involved in such technologies. issues coming up in the horizon, power is likely
FPGAs are well suited for any DSP type of to emerge as a burning problem. Process scaling
applications. Inherent parallelization possible and device densities affect power, which in turn
with FPGAs has made them highly suitable for can affect performance, cost, reliability and
such implementations. Due to this capability, operating expenses. More than anything else,
they are penetrating into astronomy and related this needs immediate attention.
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