This question is just to satisfy a curiosity. On Mouser, I see that some of the most expensive FPGA's sell for north of $30K (Altera's Stratix V GT line). How "powerful" are these chips? How much logic can be implemented on one? I tried to get a sense of what's normally done on FPGA's by looking at OpenCores' website, but they don't list the number of logic elements required to implement a particular design (or maybe they do and I'm not looking in the right place). The top-of-the-line Stratix V I can find (5SGTMC7K2F40C2ES) claims 622K logic elements and 234,720 logic array blocks. Could a full Intel Core CPU be implemented in one of these, and have comparable performance to the real thing, for example?

Also, what's the target market for these very expensive FPGA's?

 

http://www.altera.com/literature/hb/stratix-v/stx5_51001.pdf

 

That's an interesting document; it seems like the these FPGA's are intended more for communication devices, digital signal processors, etc.

For more general purpose FPGA's, what's the most that can be simulated? I'm wondering whether modern, high-end CPU's are within the realm of what an FPGA can do (full clock frequencies and all) or are they not quite there yet?

 

Just go ahead and buy 2 (then send me 1)

 

Just go ahead and buy 2 (then send me 1)

Ha, I'd probably just end up using it to blink an LED.

 

Then you bump a wire and the magic smoke comes out...