FPGAs are "everything" chips that can be purchased and then designed. FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array) Field Programmable Gate Array is an integrated circuit with programmable characteristics pre-designed and implemented on silicon chips, which can be configured as a specified circuit structure according to the designer's needs, so that customers do not have to rely on ASIC chips designed and manufactured by chip manufacturers. Widely used in prototype verification, communications, automotive electronics, industrial control, aerospace, data center and other fields.

The three major indicators of FPGA hardware: process, gate stage count, and SERDES rate, are equally important with EDA software tools. Comparing FPGA products starts with specifications. From the perspective of FPGA internal structure, it mainly includes: programmable input/output unit (I/O), programmable logic block (LC), complete clock management (CMT), embedded block RAM (BRAM), wiring resources, embedded underlying functional units and dedicated hardware modules.

According to the data disclosed by Xilinx, a LUT6 is equivalent to 1.6 LCs, an LC corresponds to tens to hundreds of "gates", and 10 million gates are approximately equal to 100,000 LCs, that is, 100K CLB-level FPGAs. Unlike ASICs, customers not only consider hardware parameters when purchasing FPGA products, but also the performance of the supporting EDA software. At present, the high-end products of domestic manufacturers have a big gap with Xilinx high-end products in terms of hardware performance indicators.

Compared with ASICs, FPGAs have three advantages:

1. Editable, more flexible

2. The product time to market is short, saving the ASIC tape-out cycle

3. Avoid one-time engineering costs, and have cost advantages when the amount is small. 

1) Flexibility: By programming the FPGA, the FPGA is able to perform any logic function that the ASIC is capable of performing. The unique advantage of FPGAs is their flexibility, which can change chip functions at any time, which can reduce the cost and risk of products in the pre-mature stage of technology, especially in the early days of 5G.

2) Time to market: Since FPGAs can be used directly after being purchased and programmed, FPGA solutions do not need to wait for the chip tape-out cycle of three months to one year, which wins the time to market for enterprises. 

3) Cost: The main difference between FPGA and ASIC is that the ASIC solution has a fixed cost and the FPGA solution is almost nothing, when the usage is small, the FPGA solution does not need to pay a one-time million-dollar tape-out cost, and also does not have to bear the risk of tape-out failure, the cost of the FPGA solution is lower than ASIC, with the increase of usage, the FPGA solution gradually shrinks in terms of cost, after a certain usage, the ASIC solution has economies of scale due to a large number of tapeouts, More advantageous in cost.

4) Technology trends: Process iteration drives 33 years of development, and platform-based products are the future.