From the course: Learning FPGA Development

What is an FPGA? - FPGA Tutorial

From the course: Learning FPGA Development

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What is an FPGA?

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- [Instructor] Let's start by answering the question, what is an FPGA? FPGA stands for field-programmable gate array, and it's a special type of integrated circuit that implements an arbitrary digital design of your own. In other words, your code determines the configuration of the digital circuitry inside the chip. So how is an FPGA customized? We can sum it all up in three steps. First, the system is designed as source code in a hardware description language like VHDL or Verilog. Next, the code is synthesized by a software tool essentially similar to a compiler. FPGA synthesis is the process of taking the source code and producing an output file that describes the internal connections that the FPGA needs in order to become your design. The output file is downloaded into the FPGA, which has a special memory for this binary data.

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