FPGAs Under the Hood

High-level design tools offer field-programmable gate array (FPGA) technology to engineers and scientists who have little or no digital hardware design expertise. Whether you use graphical programming, C, or VHDL, the synthesis process is quite complex and can leave you wondering how FPGAs really work. What actually happens inside the chip to make programs execute within configurable blocks of silicon? This white paper is intended for the nondigital designer who wants to understand the fundamental parts of an FPGA and how it all works “under the hood.” This information, also helpful when using high-level design tools, hopefully can shed some light on the inner workings of an extraordinary technology.