AMD is celebrating the 40th anniversary of the Field Programmable Gate Array, or FPGA, today and the company is detailing some of the major milestones in development of the technology over the years. If you recall, AMD acquired Xilinx back in 2022 and has since maintained the company’s leadership position in the space. The post on AMD’s site covers the FPGA from the early days and its invention back in 1985, all the way up to today, where AMD FPGAs and adaptive SoCs (a modern evolution of the tech), are used in everything from the NASA’s Mars rovers, to bleeding edge networking and communications systems, and autonomous vehicles.

Let’s start with a bit of background on what an FPGA actually does. Some might consider the FPGA somewhat of an unsung hero in the semiconductor market and it’s important to understand what they’ve enabled in their 40-year history. An FPGA is a type of integrated circuit that can be continually reprogrammed in the field to perform different types of computing tasks. Unlike traditional chips that have fixed functionality, FPGAs are mostly comprised of an array of programmable logic blocks and interconnects, which allows them to be customized for a myriad of applications. FPGAs are currently used in virtually every major industry, from automotive, aerospace, and industrial automation, to consumer electronics, telecommunications, advanced research and development, and space exploration. FPGAs are well-suited for many emerging fields, where flexibility to tune algorithms and compute requirements are paramount.