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from the chip-manufacturer-manufactures-chips dept.
It's amazing the sources some journalists use to find leads. Oftentimes it's a LinkedIn profile where an engineer reveals an undisclosed product. But in this case, it's a shipping company.
The eagle-eyed folks at WCCFTech spotted something strange in the shipping manifests for Zauba, an Indian shipping firm. The entry is an AMD product codenamed "Magnum," with references to FPGA and DTV, two acronyms that don't usually go together.
The entry in question reads "PRINTED CIRCUIT BOARD ASSEMBLY-AMD MAGNUM FPGA PROTOTYPEBOARD FOR DTV P/N .102-B25432-00 (FOC)."
Another clue from the manifest is that it originated in Canada. ATI Technologies, the GPU maker AMD acquired in 2006, was a Canadian firm and a great deal of GPU research and development is still done at the Markham, Ontario office. So this product was led by the GPU team, not the CPU team.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by LoRdTAW on Wednesday October 28 2015, @05:50PM
Says who? My old Verizon FiOS STB had an FPGA in it. In fact, when it booted, the sequence would read out on the seven segment display and one of the sequences read "FPGA". So yea, FPGA's are used in digital television applications.
After reading the article, it's clear that the author has very little knowledge of what an FPGA is. They are perfect for digital video where they can handle the analog front end for SDR decoding of the signal as well as handle real time video decoding. Have bugs or want to add features? Upload a new bit file and instantly have those changes available. They can be costly but their flexibility is unmatched and good for low production runs or where an ASIC isn't a good fit or cost effective.