Just out of curiosity.

I've been reading the wikipedia pages, as well as some other websites on th=
e
topic of PAL/CPLD/FPGA, but I still don't understand the following:

1. What are they?
2. How do they work?
3. Why are they used?
4. How are they used?
5. I've seen the term "parallel processing" mentioned a lot. How does this
tie in with PAL/CPLD/FPGA?
6. What is the difference between PAL, CPLD, and FPGA and under what
circumstances would you use each of them in?
7. Why not use a microcontroller such a PIC to do the work?
8. How does each one of them compare to a microcontroller, let's say PIC32,
in terms of cost, processing power, complexity, etc?
9. Are simple development boards for them expensive? I'm interested in
messing around with them. How is programming done?

I know those are a lot of questions, and *someone* is going to tell me to
google it, but I assure you all that I have, and would prefer answers from
human beings in this case.

Humans give insight.

Google does not.
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