Building A Better DSP Mousetrap: FPGAs, DSP Processors, or a Combination of Both?

Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) technology now offers millions of gates per device and clock rates in the hundreds of MHz range. It has advanced to the point where it provides a substantial resource for demanding, high bandwidth, real-time Digital Signal Processor (DSP) applications. With the continued advances in software tools support at the schematic capture, Very High Speed Integrated Circuits (VHSIC) Hardware Description Language (VHDL) and even C code translation level, the FPGA can now, very reasonably, be considered as a software programmable counterpart to the DSP. In many cases the FPGA is an option that offers significantly higher performance.