FPGAs are pretty awesome. But what are they, and how do you use one? Search no further than here!
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnTYf9yutn6kQIj1o5eaojC9jJIMTGI4rqIrUxTxwvDleDeBefrT5-OwZuAe_Nayt6UoYDMzq8KE0z3qxmYNwiaYMmlOUDnB7HUVZbeyePgqqGDcT38YDxCy7PKAUiwhv7_oX-rmYKAis/s320/IMG_0579.jpg) |
A Cyclone III FPGA chip on an Altera DE0 dev
board, up close. |
An FPGA is kind of like a CPU, but more awesome. Just like you can reprogram a CPU to
do different things, you can reprogram an FPGA to
be different things. In other words, you are given a whole bunch of logic gates and the complete freedom to hook them up however you want. Think about that for a moment.
That's the awesomeness of FPGAs.
You can make audio processors, password crackers, Bitcoin miners, and even parallelizable GPUs and CPUs - all on an FPGA.
The question is, how?