Field-Programmable Chips
Our first category of customizable chips are called field-programmable chips because they are programmed “in the field,” meaning in the customer's office or laboratory. They could be programmed literally out in a field, but that wasn't on anyone's mind when these chips were being developed. Field-programmable chips are like blank slates on which customers can draw their own chip design. Like blackboard slates, these chips are erasable and can be reused for many different chip designs.
The category of field-programmable chips includes some specific types that are called by different names by their manufacturers. Some are called FPGAs, short for field-programmable gate arrays. (A gate array is a technical term for an earlier ...
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