An overview of advanced FPGA architectures for optimized hardware realization of computation intensive algorithms

Algorithms used in signal and image processing applications are computationally intensive. For optimized hardware realization of such algorithms with efficient utilization of available resources, an in-depth knowledge of the targeted field programmable gate array (FPGA) technology is required. This paper presents an overview of the architectures and technologies used in modern FPGAs. A case study of most popular and widely used state-of-the-art commercial FPGA technologies from Xilinx and Altera is also presented. Three-dimensional (3D)-FPGA architecture is also discussed.