The wonder chip that's cropping up in our video devices

[netmask]

https://www.redsharknews.com/technology ... eo-devices

"FPGAs are like miracle chips. They're fast and reprogrammable, and they extend the lifespan of products that contain them

FPGAs have been around for a while. When Atomos brought out its first Ninja recorder, it had an FPGA at its core. These reprogrammable chips are ideal for repetitive heavy-duty processing like video compression and de-compression. "

[MrQuade]

They're also slower and less power efficient than a dedicated ASIC and they're more expensive. Great devices for low volume high-value applications.

You're basically buying a certain degree of futureproofing for a premium.

You see them getting used in some of the more expensive 3rd party game console hardware emulators now.

I think Intel were going to start making CPUs with embedded FPGA elements, but those were for implementing their IO interfaces if I recall. They were using the FPGA as a way of making a single CPU product that could replace a wide range of specialised CPUs by letting them easily enable different features to suit different product lines. I got excited when I first heard they were doing this, as I thought it may have been some sort of end-user configurable FPGA that could be programmed as required by an application to accelerate particular workloads.

[prl]

FPGAs have been around for a long time. They date back to the mid-1980s, though, of course, at that time not in the size needed to implement video compression or decoding.