1 MEET THE FPGA
An FPGA, short for field programmable gate array, is a highly capable type of integrated circuit, an electronic circuit in a single package. The field programmable part of the name indicates that FPGAs can be reprogrammed when in the field (that is, without having to return them to the manufacturer). The gate array part indicates that an FPGA is made up of a two-dimensional grid featuring a large number of gates, fundamental units of digital logic that we’ll discuss in depth in Chapter 3.
The name is actually a bit of an anachronism. The reality is that some FPGAs aren’t field programmable, and most are no longer just an ...
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