What if you could use software to design hardware? Not just any
hardware--imagine specifying the behavior of a complex parallel
computer, sending it to a chip, and having it run on that chip--all
without any manufacturing? With Field-Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs),
you can design such a machine with your mouse and keyboard. When you
deploy it to the FPGA, it immediately takes on the behavior that you
defined. Want to create something that behaves like a display driver
integrated circuit? How about a CPU with an instruction set you dreamed
up? Or your very own Bitcoin miner You can do all this with FPGAs.
Because you're not writing programs--rather, you're designing a chip
whose sole purpose is to do what you tell it--it's faster than anything
you can do in code. With Make: FPGAs, you'll learn how to break down
problems into something that can be solved on an FPGA, design the logic
that will run on your FPGA, and hook up electronic components to create
finished projects.