Hi All, I have some general questions related to FPGA. What do people in this forum see is the future of FPGA 4 to 5 years down the line? What are the applications it is most widely used right now, and what will be the applications that it will be highly used in a near future? Currently, on average, a consumer (who may own cellphone, camera, camcorder, ipod, etc.) owns zero FPGAs. Do you see this ratio of number of FPGAs/consumer changing? Or. Do you see power and clock speed to continue to remain as major bottlenecks for FPGAs compared to ASICs in the next few years? Or will the difference diminish in sub 65nm technologies? Or will it blow up?? There are two main advantages, as I see, of FPGAs over ASICs or processors - ability to implement designs faster (shorter time to market) and ability to perform easy "firmware updates". Will these two factors ever influence the decisions of designers to switch to FPGAs completely in the future? If you are not as optimistic about FPGAs as I am sounding, what major bottlenecks do you think will check FPGA growth? I am starting my PhD in FPGAs (and looking for topics of research!?!) and thus interested in knowing the future uses of FPGAs. Thanks.
FPGAs: Where will they go?
Started by ●June 19, 2005
Reply by ●June 19, 20052005-06-19
lovesinghal wrote:> Hi All, > > I have some general questions related to FPGA. > What do people in this forum see is the future of FPGA 4 to 5 years > down the line? > What are the applications it is most widely used right now, and what > will be the applications that it will be highly used in a near future? > Currently, on average, a consumer (who may own cellphone, camera, > camcorder, ipod, etc.) owns zero FPGAs. Do you see this ratio of number > of FPGAs/consumer changing? > > Or. Do you see power and clock speed to continue to remain as major > bottlenecks for FPGAs compared to ASICs in the next few years? Or will > the difference diminish in sub 65nm technologies? Or will it blow up?? > > There are two main advantages, as I see, of FPGAs over ASICs or > processors - ability to implement designs faster (shorter time to > market) and ability to perform easy "firmware updates". Will these two > factors ever influence the decisions of designers to switch to FPGAs > completely in the future?What about the NRE costs of ASICs ?> > If you are not as optimistic about FPGAs as I am sounding, what major > bottlenecks do you think will check FPGA growth? > > I am starting my PhD in FPGAs (and looking for topics of research!?!) > and thus interested in knowing the future uses of FPGAs. > > Thanks.You can forecast FPGA trends a little by looking at the foundres. eg Look up the recent PR by TSMC, that their first release devices on 65nm will be power optimised, not speed optimised, driven by customer demand. Also, a new entrant 'mix' in the FPGA arena comes from ST, http://www.st.com/stonline/books/ascii/docs/11335.htm They call this a "RECONFIGURABLE MICRO-CONTROLLER WITH DUAL MAC DSP" which has 16MBit DRAM, 300MHz ARM9, 600MHZ DSP, and a 200K FPGA, Dual ethernet, ADC/DAC.... FPGAs have been moving from custom-cell-less ( simple sea of LCs ) to include more hard silicon blocks, like multipliers, RAM, DSP kernal cells, and even uP. That trend will continue, & the 'Gate Array' name no longer strictly applies. -jg
Reply by ●June 20, 20052005-06-20
lovesinghal wrote:> [...] > What do people in this forum see is the future of FPGA 4 to 5 years > down the line? > What are the applications it is most widely used right now, and what > will be the applications that it will be highly used in a near future? > Currently, on average, a consumer (who may own cellphone, camera, > camcorder, ipod, etc.) owns zero FPGAs. Do you see this ratio of number > of FPGAs/consumer changing?Although on average it is indeed very, very low, it's already more than zero: http://groups.google.com/groups?&q=loewe+xelos+fpga Now, it was wondered in that and other threads if the FPGA was a permanent fixture in the product, or a stop-gap due to high profit margins and fast design rollout (such that once the design has settled down, they will likely switch to an ASIC?).> Or. Do you see power and clock speed to continue to remain as major > bottlenecks for FPGAs compared to ASICs in the next few years? Or will > the difference diminish in sub 65nm technologies? Or will it blow up??I assume Altera does this as well, but Xilinx likes to throw around meaningless comparisons about how much it would cost their customer(s) do to a design in the current state-of-the-art (90 nm, for example). What they neglect to mention is that you would likely not need to use anything close to that to achieve your performance targets (if you design was gong to work in an FPGA), so your NRE's would likely be considerably lower than theirs. Note that I am not saying anything about which is actually cheaper for a given design. The actual NRE or per-piece prices are so highly variable from one design to another that I dont think anything except a formal quote on a particular design would be able to tell you the answer.> There are two main advantages, as I see, of FPGAs over ASICs or > processors - ability to implement designs faster (shorter time to > market) and ability to perform easy "firmware updates". Will these two > factors ever influence the decisions of designers to switch to FPGAs > completely in the future?There's also resource availabilty (money and man-power, in addition to design time, as you mentioned): at least for smaller design firms, the obvious answer is to use FPGA's initially, for all the usual reasons. But after it has hit the market, do you dedicate your scarce resources to respinning that part into an ASIC, or to develop the next best thing that might sell even better? You might take a hit of a few percent of the gross profit margin, but in the grand scheme of things, perhaps that is the smarter thing to do.> If you are not as optimistic about FPGAs as I am sounding, what major > bottlenecks do you think will check FPGA growth?Despite the above statements, I'm fairly optimistic that overall FPGA sales will continue to grow... I think the $/LUT has dropped low enough that companies will continue to go for the FPGA's for all the usual reasons.> I am starting my PhD in FPGAs (and looking for topics of research!?!) > and thus interested in knowing the future uses of FPGAs.A few ideas were thrown around on a related topic recently: http://groups.google.com/groups?q=future+fpga Good luck, Marc
Reply by ●June 20, 20052005-06-20
lovesinghal wrote:> If you are not as optimistic about FPGAs as I am sounding, what major > bottlenecks do you think will check FPGA growth? > > I am starting my PhD in FPGAs (and looking for topics of research!?!) > and thus interested in knowing the future uses of FPGAs.You're basing a PhD on a few guys comments in a newsgroup ? Impressive... Rene -- Ing.Buero R.Tschaggelar - http://www.ibrtses.com & commercial newsgroups - http://www.talkto.net
Reply by ●June 20, 20052005-06-20
> I am starting my PhD in FPGAs (and looking for topics of research!?!) > and thus interested in knowing the future uses of FPGAs.Some well-thought-out responses to the majority of the questions that you've posed can be found in panel sessions or keynote addresses in conferences like FPGA and FPL from the past couple of years. (For some reason, keynote speakers at these conferences just *love* to rattle the "ASIC vs. FPGA" debate.) As a PhD student, you should have access to the speakers' PowerPoint slides through your university ... cheers, Kris
Reply by ●June 20, 20052005-06-20
Hi All, Thanks for your responses. Marc and Jim, your responses were very interesting. I learned a lot going through those searches. Rene, I did not say that I will base my PhD topic on this discussion. My advisor is helping me decide a topic in a major way. Through this side discussion, I want to know the industry opinion and opinions of people who use FPGAs in their designs. Regards, -Love
Reply by ●June 21, 20052005-06-21
lovesinghal wrote:> Rene, I did not say that I will base my PhD topic on this discussion. > My advisor is helping me decide a topic in a major way. Through this > side discussion, I want to know the industry opinion and opinions of > people who use FPGAs in their designs.Ok, you couldn't have known. The FPGAs are great to work with, enable a lot of developments and save a lot of work. Whether they further evolve or not doesn't change much as what is here already is plenty. The development is a bit too fast though. When you do a new design with brand new chips, then they tend to be outdated the next time you assemble a batch. Rene -- Ing.Buero R.Tschaggelar - http://www.ibrtses.com & commercial newsgroups - http://www.talkto.net
Reply by ●June 21, 20052005-06-21
What do people in this forum see is the future of FPGA 4 to 5 years down the line? FPGA, generic processor, or ASIC? ASICs have won out for consumer applications until recently, but now generic processors are doing tasks that used to be done almost exclusively with ASICs. Take MPEG decoding and/or encoding, like in a DVR for instance. There used to be a dozen or two different chip manufacturers that produced ASICs for this field, and now most of them aren't even bothering to come out with new products. The push seems to be using DSPs to do these things, the TI chips being the obvious leader. Part of this has to do with the ever-changing MPEG-4 "standard" and manufacturers being unwilling to commit tons of resources to design a chip that may be obsolete in a year, but it also makes sense from a technical and risk standpoint to do it in software instead of hardware. DSPs are also very power-efficient, even running full out at 600 MHz or more. Less demanding applications have already gone to generic processors, too. What are the applications it is most widely used right now, and what will be the applications that it will be highly used in a near future? Prototyping ASICs. Relatively low-volume tasks where cost is not necessarily the overwhelming priority, instead it's flexibility or development time (space, military, etc.). High-end applications where performance of DSPs is not enough (heavy-duty FIR filtering, etc.). Future applications will be the same as now. Currently, on average, a consumer (who may own cellphone, camera, camcorder, ipod, etc.) owns zero FPGAs. Do you see this ratio of number of FPGAs/consumer changing? No. Or. Do you see power and clock speed to continue to remain as major bottlenecks for FPGAs compared to ASICs in the next few years? Or will the difference diminish in sub 65nm technologies? Or will it blow up?? DSPs and generic processors will continue to take over for ASICs. FPGAs will remain a niche market. There are two main advantages, as I see, of FPGAs over ASICs or processors - ability to implement designs faster (shorter time to market) and ability to perform easy "firmware updates". Will these two factors ever influence the decisions of designers to switch to FPGAs completely in the future? Designers of what? Consumer products? No, only if cost is reduced to compete with DSPs, generic processors, and ASICs. Most ASICs these days use microcode anyway and are already firmware upgradable. DSP firmware can be upgraded as easily (perhaps easier) than FPGAs. DSPs have little of the clock speed and power consumption disadvantages of FPGAs, and are cheap too. If you are not as optimistic about FPGAs as I am sounding, what major bottlenecks do you think will check FPGA growth? In most applications generic processors will do the job just fine and cost less, burn less power, and might even be cheaper to develop with. Software programmers are cheap nowadays.
Reply by ●June 21, 20052005-06-21
Chris, Good questions. I hope lots of people respond and give their two cents. Austin Chris wrote:> What do people in this forum see is the future of FPGA 4 to 5 years down the line? > > FPGA, generic processor, or ASIC? ASICs have won out for consumer applications until recently, but now generic processors are doing tasks that used to be done almost exclusively with ASICs. Take MPEG decoding and/or encoding, like in a DVR for instance. There used to be a dozen or two different chip manufacturers that produced ASICs for this field, and now most of them aren't even bothering to come out with new products. The push seems to be using DSPs to do these things, the TI chips being the obvious leader. Part of this has to do with the ever-changing MPEG-4 "standard" and manufacturers being unwilling to commit tons of resources to design a chip that may be obsolete in a year, but it also makes sense from a technical and risk standpoint to do it in software instead of hardware. DSPs are also very power-efficient, even running full out at 600 MHz or more. Less demanding applications have already gone to generic processors, too. > > What are the applications it is most widely used right now, and what will be the applications that it will be highly used in a near future? > > Prototyping ASICs. Relatively low-volume tasks where cost is not necessarily the overwhelming priority, instead it's flexibility or development time (space, military, etc.). High-end applications where performance of DSPs is not enough (heavy-duty FIR filtering, etc.). Future applications will be the same as now. > > Currently, on average, a consumer (who may own cellphone, camera, camcorder, ipod, etc.) owns zero FPGAs. Do you see this ratio of number of FPGAs/consumer changing? > > No. > > Or. Do you see power and clock speed to continue to remain as major bottlenecks for FPGAs compared to ASICs in the next few years? Or will the difference diminish in sub 65nm technologies? Or will it blow up?? > > DSPs and generic processors will continue to take over for ASICs. FPGAs will remain a niche market. > > There are two main advantages, as I see, of FPGAs over ASICs or processors - ability to implement designs faster (shorter time to market) and ability to perform easy "firmware updates". Will these two factors ever influence the decisions of designers to switch to FPGAs completely in the future? > > Designers of what? Consumer products? No, only if cost is reduced to compete with DSPs, generic processors, and ASICs. Most ASICs these days use microcode anyway and are already firmware upgradable. DSP firmware can be upgraded as easily (perhaps easier) than FPGAs. DSPs have little of the clock speed and power consumption disadvantages of FPGAs, and are cheap too. > > If you are not as optimistic about FPGAs as I am sounding, what major bottlenecks do you think will check FPGA growth? > > In most applications generic processors will do the job just fine and cost less, burn less power, and might even be cheaper to develop with. Software programmers are cheap nowadays.
Reply by ●June 21, 20052005-06-21
Un bel giorno Chris digit�:> What do people in this forum see is the future of FPGA 4 to 5 years down > the line? > > FPGA, generic processor, or ASIC?My preference would be for FPGA with more specialized functions, and a (really) user-friendly software development environment: pseudo visual programming, no need for external toolchains for embedded CPUs development, integrated debugging instead of crappy simulators, and so on. FPGA are cool, there are a lot of special applications where they are already (and always will be) the best choice; but for the real breakthrough, IMHO they have to win the match with generic 16- and 32-bit microcontrollers/DSP for small and medium-volume applications.> Currently, on average, a consumer (who may own cellphone, camera, > camcorder, ipod, etc.) owns zero FPGAs. Do you see this ratio of number > of FPGAs/consumer changing?I really don't know much about ASIC, but as far as I can see, I don't think that FPGA would ever be the right choice for this type of volume applications. If I plan to sell one million of units, I don't care much if I have to spend one million dollars for ASIC setup, if then one chip will cost one dollar (ASIC) instead of ten (FPGA).> There are two main advantages, as I see, of FPGAs over ASICs or > processors - ability to implement designs faster (shorter time to > market) and ability to perform easy "firmware updates".Generic processors are as fast developing and upgradable than FPGA (if not more), and I used to think that the development steps for ASIC and FPGA until the "real" manufacturing were very similar. Am I wrong? And by the way, I don't think that if you order one million FPGA, either Xilinx or Altera will ship them overnight. :) -- asd
