F ield-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) have been hitting a nerve in the ASIC community since their inception. In the mid-1980s, Ross Freeman and his colleagues bought the technology from Zilog and started Xilinx, targeting the ASIC emulation and education markets. (Zilog came out of Exxon, since in the 1970s people were already afraid that oil would run out in Hitting a nerve with field-programmable gate arrays

Hitting a nerve with field-programmable gate arrays.