Computing with Field Programmable Gate Arrays
(P. H. W. Leong)

Field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) are user reconfigurable logic devices which enable rapid prototyping of complex digital circuits which are the equivalent of hundreds of thousands of logic gates. Designs can be synthesised from either schematics or a high level description, and the result of this synthesis can be downloaded to the FPGA device in less than a second. This type of computing platform enables complex custom digital hardware to be implemented in an extremely short amount of time. Reseach is being undertaken to design custom computer hardware for solving various computationally expensive problems using these devices. We have made efficient implementations of search, signal processing, floating point and cryptographic systems which are several orders of magnitude faster than an optimised software implementation. faster than an optimised software implementation.