Are Field-Programmable Gate Arrays Ready for the Mainstream?

Abstract

For more than a decade, researchers have shown that field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) can accelerate a wide variety of software, in some cases by several orders of magnitude compared to state-of-the-art microprocessors. Despite this performance advantage, FPGA accelerators have not yet been accepted by mainstream application designers and instead remain a niche technology used mainly in embedded systems.