I might use a Mecano anaolgy here. If we pretend for a second that Mecano was all there was: A CPU would be like a tape-based music box (built out of Mecano... yeh, bear with it). It's all welded together, so you can't change the mechanism, and provided you feed it the right punched tape it will make great-sounding soft music. An ASIC would be a special music box, maybe it has less range, maybe it has a few more harps, but the music is on a steel drum. Again, all the Mecano bits are welded together, so can't be changed. It plays that one song and it plays it really well. An FPGA, in contrast, is just a box of Mecano parts (sub-assemblies really). Go build what ever you want ;)
Respect for bitstream generation reinstated! Thanks for the fundamentals. Are engineering lectures available online?
I might use a Mecano anaolgy here.
If we pretend for a second that Mecano was all there was:
A CPU would be like a tape-based music box (built out of Mecano... yeh, bear with it). It's all welded together, so you can't change the mechanism, and provided you feed it the right punched tape it will make great-sounding soft music.
An ASIC would be a special music box, maybe it has less range, maybe it has a few more harps, but the music is on a steel drum. Again, all the Mecano bits are welded together, so can't be changed. It plays that one song and it plays it really well.
An FPGA, in contrast, is just a box of Mecano parts (sub-assemblies really). Go build what ever you want ;)
Thanks. This does help me understand why it takes so long to synthesize the simple designs I’m experimenting with. Great video.
These lectures are so valuable! Thank you!
Thk-you Thk-you