FPGA

FPGA is an acronym for Field Programmable Gate Array. An FPGA is an integrated circuit which can be reconfigured using software tools.

FPGAs contain logic blocks, interconnects, and I/O. Older FPGAs had simpler, more homogeneous logic blocks such as look up tables (LUTs). Newer FPGAs have "logic blocks" which are far more complex which can include LUTs, digital signal processing (DSP), and even CPU cores. In this sense, FPGAs are converging into System on Chip (SoC).

AMD (after acquiring Xilinx) and Intel (after acquiring Altera) are the biggest manufacturers of FPGAs.

CPUs and GPUs are not reconfigurable and function based on software.

Historically FPGAs were first configured using schematic capture, then with hardware description languages such as VHDL and Verliog, and now with high level synthesis tools such as LabVIEW FPGA, HDL Coder, Catapult, etc. The next generation of tools may be overlays.