News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Why Use an FPGA Instead of a CPU or GPU?. Parent comment

Re:Why Use an FPGA Instead of a CPU or GPU? by stumpylog on Tuesday August 14, 2018 @10:45AM (#17758392)
No, they retain state. We used an Altera DE1 in school and it retained our burnt in program until erased or reprogrammed
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Why Use an FPGA Instead of a CPU or GPU? by zwieback on Tuesday August 14, 2018 @10:49AM (#17758417)
Probably burned into an external EEPROM or flash, the FPGA fabric itself still has to be configured by some external means. It's pretty fast but on-the-fly reprogramming of the FPGA logic is still an issue where you want to very quickly switch the logic on the FPGA.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Why Use an FPGA Instead of a CPU or GPU? by monocasa on Tuesday August 14, 2018 @11:00AM (#17758528)
Most FPGAs I've seen go out of their way to allow you to reconfigure while it's running, you just have to jump through a few extra hoops and get down and dirty with the floor plan.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Why Use an FPGA Instead of a CPU or GPU? by kevin_thibedeau on Tuesday August 14, 2018 @12:00PM (#17759111)
Older Altera CPLDs and Actel/Microsemi antifuse based FPGA families have nonvolatile configuration within the fabric. They enjoy the benefit of near instant start up since there is no programming phase to transfer a bitstream from an external flash part.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Why Use an FPGA Instead of a CPU or GPU? by spilk on Tuesday August 14, 2018 @12:03PM (#17759133)
some have the configuration memory on-die as well to keep part count down. Also good to help protect your bitstream, but this isn't infallible of course.
[ Parent | on HN ]