On Fri, 2005-02-25 at 10:44 -0800, Padu wrote:
> I am sorry an even dummier question, but what is the utility of fpgas? Are
> they complemental to microcontrollers? Why would I want to use one?

FPGAs are great for customized, high I/O, high speed and low complexity
operations. 

Of course there's nothing stopping someone from putting an MCU core into
an FPGA (and many do it), the more common use of FPGAs are cases where
MCUs just don't have the horsepower/IO for the complexity needed. A good
example is interfacing to PCI: high IO, low complexity (relatively).

A newer example would be interfacing to PCIE, MCUs have no chance (at
the moment), the task is certainly doable with an FPGA (of the right
type).

> If they are volatile like RAM, then I can only guess that if I was to
> include one in a design, then I'd have to have something (a microcontroller)
> to program them?

Most FPGAs offer an easy method to program, i.e. many have a sort of
EEPROM you connect to the FPGA that programs the FPGA on powerup
(probably more accurate is to say the FPGA programs itself fetching the
bit stream from the external PROM). 

There are some newer FPGAs with non-volatile memory that don't need to
be programmed on powerup, but those are relativly rare. TTYL


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