Soft cores and their role in the maturity of FPGAs

This presentation considers the changing economics of chip design and progress in FPGA technology. The speaker reviews the developments that have shaped today's FPGAs and looks at the future tools and cores that will ensure FPGAs continue to play a key role in tomorrow's systems. He then discusses IP business models and tools for IP re-use. A few years ago, when the first FPGAs broke the 100-K logic gate barrier, many engineers questioned what they would ever do with all that logic. Design re-use and soft IP cores quickly answered this question and continue to drive the density and features of FPGAs and ultimately what is possible in FPGAs.