What's an FPGA?

In the video I give a brief introduction into what an FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array) is and the basics of how it works. In the future I might go more in-depth about certain topics relating to FPGAs/ASICs and CPUs, such as how synthesis or compilation works, or topics like retiming and lower-level FPGA architecture.
This video was mostly made for me to practice doing animations and graphics all with Python and trying to experiment with developing my own style/aesthetic.
Animations made using Grant Sanderson's (3blue1brown) wonderful "manim" Python animation engine: github.com/3b1...
Music: "Black Jar" by Message (betterwithmusic.com) CC BY-SA: betterwithmusic...

[@crclayton]

Apologies for the shameless plug here, but since making this video I've started working at Intel in the FPGA division (*now Altera again!). If you want to see some more FPGA-related tutorials by me, feel free to check out my introductory high-level synthesis demo on the Intel FPGA channel here: kzbin.info/www/bejne/o4Kuh4Sgf9N8sKM

[@cxsey8587]

Awesome explanation, makes much more sense than the super abstracted concepts people typically use

[@wahabfiles6260]

OMG THE BEST EXPLANATION ON FPGA! AMAZING TRANSITION OF CONCEPTS!

[@rachidtahiri9514]

The simplest explanation ever, thank you so much

[@kikiroy5178]

The ratio between your speech speed and the video progress speed is perfect ! Don't change it !

[@FPGASystems]

The Best video which saw about fpga. GJ

[@saivenkat4335]

I am into the Talent Acquisition Team and you made it so simple that non Technical people can also understand.

[@melwinalm]

Best and the easiest explanation on FPGA

[@esotericray5750]

Loved the simple overview the animations made it easier to comprehend

[@vinicentus]

This is by far the best general explanation of FPGAs I have seen!

[@asht7788]

The best explanation on the internet. Thanks. You are a rockstar

[@MelloCello7]

Simple elegant and beautiful video. They dont make video's quite like this anymore, you packed more info into 1 minute then most do into 10, thank you for taking your time to share your expertise, and congratulations on your position at Intel!

[@philipacovington]

FPGAs are really great for those interesting in retro-computing or learning how a CPU works. I am implementing Ben Eater's 8-bit computer in an FPGA in a series of videos on my channel for anyone interested. Very cool stuff!

[@rohankumar6962]

one of the best short explanations I ever had

[@revolutionoftheresolution5867]

the best video that i've ever seen in my life about fpga :)

[@justintiger9]

short and sweet. thanks for this

[@citricdolphin]

Thank you!! I understood the concept of the hardware itself being programmable, but I didn't understand how that was possible. This video perfectly filled in that gap.

[@jeffreyyucheng]

Definitely an awesome visualized explanation!!!!

[@TusharSundarka]

This video is literally incredible omg

[@TheCentreforComputingHistory]

Great description!

[@andrewgreen1970]

At first the content seemed a little confusing and somewhat out of order, but I figured it out after multiple re-watches. Very informative and hopefully will prove to be very useful to me some time in the future. Thank you.

[@academicstuff548]

Thanks sir for such a wonderful explanation.

[@ZatoichiRCS]

Pretty good summary.

[@mandelkuchen2288]

I am in love with this!

[@6LayersDeep]

Very clean explanation. probably the best on KZbin.

[@RickB3n]

Love the perfection of this vid

[@shade4246]

Who can explain what the heck is FPGAs i really do not get what is this

[@mehmetayparyangozalumni2606]

Dude it's programmable lookup tables, duh😂

[@midclock]

Instead of writing the code that you upload on a microcontroller, you write the code that transforms the fpga IC into an actual microcontroller. Basically if you know how an existing IC is made, you can recreate a copy of it by writing its code. The next day you need something else, let's say drive a display, then you write (or download) the code, upload it on the fpga, and you have another device. It's similar to the concept of 3D printing applied to electronics.

[@fabienso5889]

It's a flexible architecture Basically instead of designing and printing a circuit board You can just code it's behavior

[@NoSpeechForTheDumb]

​@@midclockconfiguring an FPGA as a microcontroller is only one of infinitely many applications. It's not even mandatory, you can as well have a dedicated external microcontroller which communicates with the FPGA over PCIe, or no software at all. That's hard to imagine in our software-focused world of course.

[@midclock]

@@NoSpeechForTheDumb well I've bought one, but honestly it's still too much for me. I think that anything that can be built inside a digital IC, can be ideally replicated into an FPGA, but I'm not sure about it. Even if you learn VHDL or similar, I think that knowing digital electronics is mandatory before writing any code. I hope to learn it in the future, it's a fascinating topic!

[@gerhenry7127]

You make an FPGA sound so simple 😉

[@graphene1487]

what a great explanation and concise too. Thank you!

[@jendoesthemaths]

Love the background music. We shall call the genre bubblegum grunge.

[@tombouie]

Well-Done; The simplest/bestest/briefest description I've come across. PS: ??hows-abouts a simple FPGA playlist for the numerous FPGA dummies like me??

[@FPGABeginner]

I tried to start with FPGA programming, but didn't really get my head around it. I found the VHDPlus IDE and with the simple language, embedded libraries and other features it helped me a lot to make some cool projects :) Just in case someone has the same problem

[@user-sz9io3gj7x]

amazing video thank you. Always wondered how hardware could be magically changed by a program.

[@ai15208]

what a legendary explanation.

[@PhrontDoor]

It's kind of amazing. You can basically WRITE hardware. You can take code, and re-make a custom 6502 with extra features, or just even just one that works just like the original.

[@108ahah]

Very good video. Hope to see more videos in future. Thanks for your work.

[@oppenheimjm]

Loved that explanation

[@educato4580]

WOW, that was sooo simple, even for a non native speaker

[@afafds2320]

Great video great explanation. thank you

[@cryora]

But can you program a circuit (of resistors, capacitors, inductors, transistors, diodes, etc.) into an FPGA? Or is it only computer instructions?

[@crclayton]

The FPGA is a digital device -- so you can implement a digital circuit on it (logic gates, switches, memory blocks, etc.), not an analog circuit (inductors, capacitors, diodes, etc.).

[@willz3222]

Brilliant explanation

[@alymahmoud922]

amazing simple explanation thanks

[@zuowang5185]

This is good, no more videos?

[@hermaiani]

I loved this, thank you so much!

[@EtherTheReal]

Noice, no need for an entire semester of hardware architecture, i got it from a 90sec KZbin video😂 Thanks man!

[@alirezakhorami]

Amazing Content!!!

[@melkenhoning158]

Just curious, How long did it take to make these manim animations?

[@guerra_dos_bichos]

Cant ee just write "transpilers" to whatever new fpga arrangement , so our simple run of the mill cpu code will run optimally on any fpga?

[@alazadar]

What software you used to make these good animations of numbers and blocks?

[@mammamia2418]

Yup now I understand

[@sangarsiva5080]

Awesome. very short still a gem...

[@anti-tankartur677]

Thanks for this illustration. Greatly admired.

[@nnamdi1172]

this video was beautiful

[@Crayoness]

Amazing!

[@mustafaadel8194]

how does the user reprogram look-up table ??

[@koteswararao110]

Oh god😱.. This is awesome👏

[@solotron7390]

Can the FPGA reprogram itself at runtime?

[@crclayton]

Yes, there are some techniques where the FPGA can download an image from an external source like a PCIe link or flash memory, then reprogram a section of the FPGA's logic while keeping the other logic consistent.

[@solotron7390]

@@crclayton Consider the advantages of writing a function where parameters are not passed, but rather the code is modified before calling it (if necessary), or where optimization is performed just in time before execution.

[@sickleandsuckle]

How would you make your lookup tables "programmable"

[@g.d.8065]

A lookup table is just some memory that contains some set values, so you can make them programmable by storing them on rewriteable memory. In this case, the lookup tables are being used as logic gates by taking the individual address bits as the inputs, and the individual bits of the value stored at that address as the outputs.

[@everydaymoments5327]

best explaination😀

[@thanatosor]

What're best boards to start learning with ?

[@theoryandapplication7197]

thabkyou for sharing

[@KIDSTOONS48489]

What are lookup tables

[@tombouie]

Thks & I have a simple question that you have the expertise to easily answer; ??WithIn the combinational/sequential logic domain, are FPGAs an excellent replacement for traditonal CPU based systems??

[@crclayton]

It depends on the application, but yes there are situations where an FPGA could be a good replacement for a CPU based system. Particularly where low-latency, high-bandwidth, or high-parallelism are required. FPGAs can also be programmed to actually implement a CPU within the FPGA fabric alongside other logic (ex. Nios V).

[@aravindhvasu195]

This is Awesome. Can you please share your code?

[@nothinginteresting1662]

Wait a minute...Could it be THAT simple? Configurable lookup tables?! And this can run ANY piece of software???!!!🤯

[@three_d1640]

Thanks.

[@shreyj574]

cool explination

[@thakshakmp4352]

u are a legend

[@thakshakmp4352]

the simplicity of the explanation is just wow....

[@hendmuhammad6238]

EXCELLENT,thanks a lot

[@youngsdiscovery8909]

very clear

[@guliyevshahriyar]

thanks. makes sense

[@guerra_dos_bichos]

Ok wait, so an FPGA is just a software defined circuit?

[@crclayton]

I've never heard that description but I think it's appropriate, yes.

[@morsemo6966]

Talent video to explainn FPGA...

[@MobileDecay]

This reminds me of the time I had diarrhea at my grandma's house.

[@jean-christophelelann6308]

Thx for the video. How did you manage to do such morphing ?

[@DmitryShpika]

FPGA 😎

[@objectobjectobject4707]

YES

[@cezar3588]

Some people come into our lives and leave footprints on our hearts, while others come into our lives and make us wanna leave footprints on their face.

[@miordaniel3235]

Justin liked this video.Is her learning something?

[@manobendro]

This explanation is best for primary school child...

[@Dajona4MinecraftMultiGaming]

It's a 1 minute video, it’s not where you’ll find the technicals details...

[@umarkhan-ey7dx]

❤❤❤

[@afsallais9825]

👌

[@fredrickreagan8515]

Sweet

[@tombouie]

Finally a Keep-It-Simple explaination for Stupid people like me, thks.

[@zx81]

wow!

[@JoRoBoYo]

ah, so fpga is a stem cell and hdl is the instructions. got it

[@wailghaoui7811]

Easy!!

[@harys6382]

its been 3 yrs🙄

[@musicworld4803]

Hai bro help me

[@sistemsylar]

post code

[@liamsweeney1620]

nah its still black magic

[@user-gd8bx3fk9s]

牛逼

[@f9bro573]

Are‼️ u there? Can I ask you a question? First tell me Are you still using this channel?

[@cezar3588]

Don't you find it Funny that after Monday(M) and Tuesday(T), the rest of the week says WTF?

[@dronefootage2778]

I would have at least mentioned that it runs much faster, would have taken 5 seconds.

[@crclayton]

I suppose I could have, but that would be a broad and incorrect overgeneralization. Runs what faster? By what metric? GPUs, CPUs, and FPGAs all have different applications and strengths and weaknesses. FPGAs can't operate at anything like the frequencies CPUs can run at, but they allow for flexibility and parallelism and ASIC modeling. FPGAs don't really "run" anything, they implement a circuit and some circuits are fast and others aren't.

[@dronefootage2778]

@@crclayton i've never used an fpga, but plenty of embedded processing, my number one question would be why someone would choose an fpga over doing stuff in the processor and i always thought because fpga's can do a lot of things really really fast.

[@zexalsrevenge511]

I like to think FPGA is for emulation haters. I wonder if there’s a group of people who dump on emulation for whatever reason or for inaccuracies and crashing and will always stick to real hardware whenever possible until FPGA happened. I’m not an emulation hater, I’m just asking if you’ve seen people like “emulation sux!!! real hardware ftw!!!”. But I like to think FPGA gives emulation a run for its money and will probably replace it in a few years.

[@rohanmishra2415]

OMG THE BEST EXPLANATION ON FPGA! AMAZING TRANSITION OF CONCEPTS!