FPGAs are an amazing product that almost shouldn't exist if you think about the business and marketing concerns. They are a product that is too expensive at scale. If an application takes off, it is eventually cheaper and more performant to switch to ASICs, which is obvious when you see the 4-digit prices of the most sophisticated FPGAs.
Given how ruinously expensive silicon products are to bring to market, it's amazing that there are multiple companies competing (albeit in distinct segments).
FPGAs also seem like a largely untapped domain in general purpose computing, a bit like GPUs used to be. The ability to reprogram an FPGA to implement a new digital circuit in milliseconds would be a game changer for many workloads, except that current CPUs and GPUs are already very capable.
checker659•1h ago
I think FPGAs (or CGRAs really) will make a comeback once LLMs can directly generate FPGA bitstreams.
15155•49m ago
What does "directly generate FPGA bitstreams" mean?
Placement and routing is an NP-Complete problem.
duskwuff•15m ago
And I certainly can't imagine how a language model would be of any use here, in a problem which doesn't involve language.
15155•13m ago
They are "okay" at generating RTL, but are likely never going to be able to generate actual bitstreams without some classical implementation flow in there.
inamberclad•48m ago
The problem is that the tools are still weak. The languages are difficult to use, nobody has made something more widely adopted than Verilog or VHDL. In addition, the IDEs are proprietary and the tools are fragile and not reproduceable. Synthesis results can vary from run to run on the exact same code with the same parameters, with real world impacts on performance. This all conspires to make FPGA development only suitable for bespoke products with narrow use cases.
I would love to see the open source world come to the rescue here. There are some very nice open source tools for Lattice FPGAs and Lattice's lawyers have essentially agreed to let the open source tools continue unimpeded (they're undoubtedly driving sales), but the chips themselves can't compete with the likes of Xilinx.
15155•47m ago
> The ability to reprogram an FPGA to implement a new digital circuit in milliseconds would be a game changer for many workloads
Someone has to design each of those reconfigurable digital circuits and take them through an implementation flow.
Only certain problems map well to easy FPGA implementation: anything involving memory access is quite tedious.
petra•19m ago
//If an application takes off, it is eventually cheaper and more performant to switch to ASICs,
That's part of the FPGA business model - they have an automated way to take an FPGA design and turn it into a validated semi-custom ASIC, at low NRE, at silicon nodes(10nm?) you wouldn't have access to otherwise.
And all of that at a much lower risk. This is a strong rational but also emotional appeal. And people are highly influenced by that.
duskwuff•9m ago
Is this still an active thing? My understanding is that both Xilinx and Altera/Intel have effectively discontinued their ASIC programs (Xilinx EasyPath, Altera HardCopy); they aren't available for modern part families.
For what it's worth, Xilinx EasyPath was never actually ASIC. The parts delivered were still FPGAs; they were just FPGAs with a reduced testing program focusing on functionality used by the customer's design.
kev009•11m ago
For a while in the 2000s Cisco was one of the biggest users of FPGAs. If you consider how complicated digital designs have been for many decades, and the costs of associated failures, FPGAs can certainly be cost neutral at scale, especially accounting for risk and reputational damage, into production lines.
Also there is a large gamut and pretty much always has been for decades of programmable logic.. some useful parts are not much more than a mid range microcontroller. The top end is for DoD, system emulation, novel frontier/capture regimes (like "AI", autonomous vehicles).. few people ever work on those compared to the cheaper parts.
avidiax•1h ago
Given how ruinously expensive silicon products are to bring to market, it's amazing that there are multiple companies competing (albeit in distinct segments).
FPGAs also seem like a largely untapped domain in general purpose computing, a bit like GPUs used to be. The ability to reprogram an FPGA to implement a new digital circuit in milliseconds would be a game changer for many workloads, except that current CPUs and GPUs are already very capable.
checker659•1h ago
15155•49m ago
Placement and routing is an NP-Complete problem.
duskwuff•15m ago
15155•13m ago
inamberclad•48m ago
I would love to see the open source world come to the rescue here. There are some very nice open source tools for Lattice FPGAs and Lattice's lawyers have essentially agreed to let the open source tools continue unimpeded (they're undoubtedly driving sales), but the chips themselves can't compete with the likes of Xilinx.
15155•47m ago
Someone has to design each of those reconfigurable digital circuits and take them through an implementation flow.
Only certain problems map well to easy FPGA implementation: anything involving memory access is quite tedious.
petra•19m ago
That's part of the FPGA business model - they have an automated way to take an FPGA design and turn it into a validated semi-custom ASIC, at low NRE, at silicon nodes(10nm?) you wouldn't have access to otherwise.
And all of that at a much lower risk. This is a strong rational but also emotional appeal. And people are highly influenced by that.
duskwuff•9m ago
For what it's worth, Xilinx EasyPath was never actually ASIC. The parts delivered were still FPGAs; they were just FPGAs with a reduced testing program focusing on functionality used by the customer's design.
kev009•11m ago
Also there is a large gamut and pretty much always has been for decades of programmable logic.. some useful parts are not much more than a mid range microcontroller. The top end is for DoD, system emulation, novel frontier/capture regimes (like "AI", autonomous vehicles).. few people ever work on those compared to the cheaper parts.