A lot of the embedded applications don't really need an FPGA, and FPGA's are not as accessible. Micro-controllers are plentiful, cheap and easy to get started with compared to FPGA's, so that's what people know and use. Tools are available free of cost and the amount of sample code available for embedded processors dwarfs FPGA code. Furthermore, the availability of embedded operating systems (and Linux in particular) makes it a much lower barrier to entry than FPGA. This means that people doing embedded as a hobby, or students, will more readily use micro-controllers and less FPGA based systems.

I think that the combination of CPU/FPGA in the same package will lower the barrier to entry for the casual user and hobbyist which hopefully spark a wide range of projects available to many (think Arduino, but with FPGA's). The combination of CPU and FPGA means people have access to something they are familiar with (CPU) while giving them the ability to learn something new (FPGA).

One thing that I personally believe should happen is for the tools to become more readily available, preferably as Open Source. They don't have to be as good as the commercial tools, or as feature-full, but should be easy enough to use to let people new to the field get familiar with it.


Johan.

I have been using FPGAs for several years. The weakness in an FPGA is when I want a SPI interface I pay for the use of one or I develop my own. When I want an SDLC interface I pay for one or develop my own. When I want a SD card interface I pay for one or develop my own. I develop all of these on my own which is time consuming and error prone. I can buy a DSP or microcontroller with these built in. I just address the function. Secondly I have old code that was fine on older FPGAs that will not work on newer ones. All the issues are related to timing which you never contend with on a DSP or microcontroller. Tools for solving timing issues are expensive and require training or time to develop expertise in using them. I have developed my own soft processor on the FPGA in order to make the task easier. The FPGA development software needs to handle the timing issues more to put less strain on the developer.

Why don't I use FPGAs in my design? It is quite simple. They burn just too much power and cost too much money.

I cannot afford more than a couple of mA average operating current for the entire operational cycle of my satellite modem. This means that it must be possible to close down to a very low power state for any idle periods, and that any protocol and signal conditioning must be performed fast but with the minimum of processor power dissipation.

Oh, and the part must cost less than $3.

So far I have not seen an FPGA that can cut it.

FPGAs are very nice for certain things, but not always cost effective, and as some people already mentioned, they have certain drawbacks.
I think they can be most useful when there are tasks that can and should be executed in parallel. Atmel used to make FPSLICs -- microcontrollers with an FPGA -- but I don't think they had much success with them.

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