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Altera_Forum
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10 years ago

How to get C program or openCL program to call or interact with a preconfigured FPGA

Hi, I am new to FPGA's but I am wondering is it possible to to have a preconfigured FPGA already pre-built to do a particular task and have a C or C++ or openCL function call the FPGA and send and...
Altera_Forum's avatar
Altera_Forum
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10 years ago

That depends. Is your goal to crunch numbers or learn how to work with FPGAs using number crunching as an example. If you goal is number crunching you will find it much easier to use a GPU. Even if the processing ends up quicker on an FPGA you will be ahead because GPUs are cheaper than FPGAs and faster to develop for. You would use an FPGA if you need to do massive I/O and crunch numbers.

I've not used openCL, but I expect it is easier to use than Verilog/VHDL with the trade off of lower performance and greater FPGA resource usage for any given task.