FPGA advantages
Systems based on FPGAs (Field Programmable Gate Arrays) offer many advantages over conventional implementations. FPGAs provide you with the possibility of becoming independent of component manufacturers and suppliers, since interfaces and system components can be tailored exactly to your requirements. In addition, the development cycle of complex systems is shortened by the early availability of product prototypes, and the developed hardware can be updated in the field, resulting in an extremely short time-to-market.
Long-term availability
The use of FPGAs makes you independent of component manufacturers, because the functionality is not in the module itself but in the configuration. This can be programmed in such a way that it can be undertaken without any adjustments on different FPGAs.
Updating and adaptation at the customer
In contrast to conventional computer chips, FPGAs are fully programmable. Updates and adaptations can be carried out even after delivery, directly at the customer.
Very short time-to-market
The use of FPGAs significantly accelerates development of prototypes, since a part of the hardware development lies in design of the IP cores. In the course of this, it is possible to carry out time-consuming operations such as commissioning and troubleshooting at the same time as development.
Fast and efficient systems
As the largest possible user group is to be addressed with standard components, these are usually a compromise between performance and compatibility. FPGAs offer the possibility of developing systems that are exactly tailored to the intended task, which thus work absolutely efficiently.
Acceleration of software
Complex tasks are often solved by software implementations with fast processors. FPGAs offer a cost-effective alternative, which, via parallelization and adaption to the application, provide a significant speed advantage compared to processor-based solutions.
Real-time applications
FPGAs are ideal for application in time-critical systems. In contrast to software-based solutions with real-time operating systems, an actually deterministic behaviour can be achieved using FPGAs. Due to the offered flexibility, even complicated calculations can be carried out in an extremely short time.
Massively parallel data processing
The amount of data to be processed in current systems is steadily increasing, which means that they can no longer be processed in a timely manner using sequentially operating systems. The use of FPGAs offers an outstandingly scalable solution via the parallel processing of data.