771·
2 days agoVivado is software for designing hardware on an FPGA. AMD bought out Xilinx, one of the big FPGA manufacturers, a few years back. FPGAs are basically programmable digital circuits: you configure a series of internal logic gates to represent the function of a circuit with memory, data busses, registers, gates, etc. In this fashion, an FPGA could be programmed to function like a CPU, a radio, a video encoder, or nearly any other piece of digital hardware. Very useful for hobbyists and prototyping.
The thing with FPGA software is that there are no open source alternatives. FPGAs have so many complicated blobs and signing keys and proprietary IP blocks that your only choice is to use the manufacturer’s offering.
Very true. I believe FPGAs are also popular for aerospace applications, since it’s cheaper to design and patch programmable hardware than to design and physically install ASICs.