FPGA Design Tips

In FPGA and RTL development, four terms are frequently used to describe code changes: refactor, refine, fix/correct, and optimize. They are often used interchangeably in casual conversation, but they mean distinctly different things. Using the right term helps your team understand immediately what kind of change is being made — and whether to expect any behavioural differences. Refactor Definition: Restructure internal implementation without changing externally observable behaviour. A refactored module passes the same test vectors before and after the change. Simulation output is bit-identical. Timing may or may not improve. ...

An FPGA does not work in isolation. No matter how correct your RTL is, the design will fail if the power supply is noisy, the clock does not reach the device cleanly, or a digital interface is mismatched at the board level. FPGA engineers who can diagnose hardware problems are significantly more effective than those who can only debug RTL in simulation. This post covers the board-level skills that separate a junior FPGA engineer from a senior one. ...

What Happened to FPGA Prices? Between 2020 and 2022, the semiconductor industry experienced what analysts called “chipflation” — a sustained, broad-based price increase driven by pandemic-related demand spikes, supply chain disruptions, and surging investment in AI and 5G infrastructure. FPGA manufacturers were not immune. AMD (Xilinx) and Intel (Altera) both cited rising TSMC wafer costs as justification for significant list-price increases — in some cases close to double the pre-pandemic price. Unlike commodity memory or microcontroller price spikes that eventually normalised, elevated FPGA prices have proven sticky. ...