Author Topic: who uses fpga's  (Read 11965 times)

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Offline james_s

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Re: who uses fpga's
« Reply #125 on: April 13, 2021, 09:56:53 pm »
Yes and you can hammer in nails with a crowbar, or you can pry things apart with a claw hammer, they're both made of tool steel so they're the same thing in a sense and if crowbars were cheaper than hammers you could build a house using crowbars instead so the market would have to take that into account.

Yes FPGAs and GPUs (and CPUs and ASICs and...) are made of silicon and comprised of logic gates and other various elements, and yes they can do some of the same tasks. Yes you can make a GPU (of sorts) out of an FPGA but you cannot make an FPGA out of a GPU. The FPGA is a massive digital breadboard that you can "wire" into any sort of digital device you want, THAT is what makes it so powerful, it is versatile, it is flexible, a GPU on the other hand is a hardwired device, it will always be a GPU, it is a microprocessor, it cannot do anything at all without code and you can never change what it is, you cannot add a new instruction or tweak an existing one to work differently, the design is cast in stone.

An FPGA is a block of clay, a GPU is a ceramic mug. You can make a mug out of a block of clay, it probably won't be as nice as a mug you can go buy from the store but you can make it exactly the way you like, precisely the dimensions, shape and design you want, your imagination is the limit. You're not limited to a mug either, you can make a vase too, or a flower pot, or a floor tile, or a trivet to set hot pans on, or a candle holder, a sculpture, or if you're like some of the kids in my Ceramics class in highschool you can make a bong and hope the teacher doesn't realize what it is. Blocks of clay are not really competing with ready made mugs, making your own mug will probably cost more, depending on your skill it will probably not turn out as nice, and it will certainly take a lot more time and effort but in exchange you get the flexibility to make whatever you want, to specify every detail, to tune and tweak the design in any way imaginable.

Maybe you need one very special mug designed specifically for some very unique need that will never be made in volumes sufficient to have them mass produced, or maybe you have an idea for a new type of mug that you wish to test out in the field before committing to the considerable cost of manufacturing a batch of tens of thousands of them, THAT is what FPGAs are good for, and THAT is what people pay the money for. If they need a GPU they buy a GPU, but a GPU is useless if you need something that doesn't involve mathematical calculations of the sort used to render 3D images.
 

Online ebastler

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Re: who uses fpga's
« Reply #126 on: April 13, 2021, 10:04:53 pm »
Sorry, but I think I do have a point here.  8)

GPUS and FPGAS can actually run the same task.   AND!  U can make a gpu on an fpga!  Its another kind of microcontroller.
If fpgas were cheaper than GPUS then it would cheaper to make a gpu on an fpga.   

Both a gpu and an fpga are digital logic,  they are the same thing, wires connecting transistors.  A gpu is an fpga in the form of a gpu with the programmality removed.

So the market would have to take it into account to a degree.

This is either a rather lame trolling attempt or an indication of rather muddled thinking.
I'm out of here, have fun with your digital fpga microcontroller gpu logic programmality transistors.
 

Offline CapernicusTopic starter

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Re: who uses fpga's
« Reply #127 on: April 13, 2021, 10:20:22 pm »
You can emulate an fpga with a gpu.
 

Offline james_s

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Re: who uses fpga's
« Reply #128 on: April 13, 2021, 10:27:18 pm »
You can emulate an fpga with a gpu.

No, you can't.

You could emulate some of the behavior modeled by an FPGA, but not any more than you can simulate any electronic circuit on a general purpose computer, it won't be the same thing and it won't be useful for the sort of applications that FPGAs are good for. Going back to an earlier example, even Pong cannot be emulated at a gate level anywhere near real-time on even a modern high end PC.
 
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Offline CapernicusTopic starter

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Re: who uses fpga's
« Reply #129 on: April 13, 2021, 10:43:36 pm »
depends on how much estate is devoted to the gpu.
 

Offline emece67

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Re: who uses fpga's
« Reply #130 on: April 13, 2021, 11:20:55 pm »
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« Last Edit: August 19, 2022, 04:22:23 pm by emece67 »
 
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Offline Daixiwen

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Re: who uses fpga's
« Reply #131 on: April 14, 2021, 07:56:19 am »
You can emulate an fpga with a gpu.
It's in fact a lot easier to emulate an fpga with a cpu. It's called an hdl simulator.
 
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Offline dietert1

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Re: who uses fpga's
« Reply #132 on: April 14, 2021, 08:34:09 am »
Nonsense. We don't call this "emulation" but "simulation". It will be a factor 1000 or more slower than the real FPGA and completely useless except for debugging the VHDL description to some extent. Nobody will simulate a complete FPGA solution but only components.

Regards, Dieter
« Last Edit: April 14, 2021, 08:36:32 am by dietert1 »
 

Offline emece67

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Re: who uses fpga's
« Reply #133 on: April 14, 2021, 10:15:21 am »
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« Last Edit: August 19, 2022, 04:22:34 pm by emece67 »
 

Offline dietert1

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Re: who uses fpga's
« Reply #134 on: April 14, 2021, 10:50:11 am »
A simulation will never be an emulation, that was the wrong term and it represents a stupid idea. Even if you have a powerful simulator, it will still be a lot slower than the original. Of course, if you abuse an FPGA to simulate an ARM processor, the original will probably run faster and you have a chance of making an emulator for that FPGA. Everybody understands that FPGAs can be used to simulate or even emulate other types of logic. The other way around it's simulation only.

Regards, Dieter
 

Offline Daixiwen

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Re: who uses fpga's
« Reply #135 on: April 14, 2021, 11:14:25 am »
should have put a smiley there....  my point to Capernicus was that if you want to have a gpu to emulate an FPGA, you'll run into the same set of problems than when simulating with a CPU. It may work in real time for some simple designs, but most of the time it will be a lot slower.

if you need to run an algorithm that GPUs are well optimized for, then by all means use a GPU. Trying to port it to an FPGA would probably be a waste of time and resources. But there are all sorts of algorithms FPGAs are better suited for, if you are looking for performance.
 

Offline vaualbus

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Re: who uses fpga's
« Reply #136 on: May 12, 2021, 09:30:18 am »
Trolling aside you main problem is another you thing about FPGA as computer where to run code and this yield to you about confusion.
When you are using FPGA you are not programming per se what you are doing is telling what the hardware should do by synthesizing it into a set of LUT/ALU/FF/ecc.
You are not compiling the code and make it run. So first I don't think a body simulation is good for FPGA also because a part form your algo than in  FPGA you should implement video/memory controller/ecc and above this it's not easy to made a board with DDR4, for example, memory in term of layout too.
You are missing some points. Also before thinking about which FPGA you use you should have your RTL design ready and simulated and be sure it work. After you would look at your CAD software and knowing the resource the designed required chose which FPGA to use. In there you would also decide which optimization to perform ecc.
So I think you main problem is that you think you can program as you program a software an FPGA and that is not correct either.
 

Offline vaualbus

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Re: who uses fpga's
« Reply #137 on: May 12, 2021, 12:28:32 pm »
good luck running 2ghz on FPGA..... Before making any quote you should realize what it mean don't pretend to know stuff when you are saying bul***.
FPGA cannot be used when the bitrate is high as the fact that there is a routing network i there make the critical path longer so the overall fMax is lower.
There is a reason why you need ASICs, there you can decide the floorplan of the chip to reduce as much as possible the critical path.
Also you are completely unaware of how a digital design is performed is not like programming  |O |O

« Last Edit: May 12, 2021, 12:31:31 pm by vaualbus »
 


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