Re:Why Use an FPGA Instead of a CPU or GPU?
by jrockway on Tuesday August 14, 2018 @03:30PM
(#17761086)
I feel like people are taking the hybrid approach of having a dedicated microcontroller on the same die as their CPU, like the PRU on TI's ARM chips: http://processors.wiki.ti.com/index.php/PRU-ICSS
This by no means replaces an FPGA, but if you just want your pins to flip and code to run at a predictable interval, this gets you that. (As for reading pins, they have another peripheral on the die that will just timestamp when an event occurs. This is much more consistent than dealing with your OS's interrupt handler, but again, it's no FPGA.)
Re:Why Use an FPGA Instead of a CPU or GPU?
by stefan_ on Tuesday August 14, 2018 @03:58PM
(#17761347)
Yeah, the TI PRUs are what you get approaching this topic from a processor manufacturer standpoint, the XILINX Zynq is how a FPGA manufacturers would do it.
This by no means replaces an FPGA, but if you just want your pins to flip and code to run at a predictable interval, this gets you that. (As for reading pins, they have another peripheral on the die that will just timestamp when an event occurs. This is much more consistent than dealing with your OS's interrupt handler, but again, it's no FPGA.)