(246c) Field-Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) for Process Control and Instrumentation

A Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) is an integrated circuit that can be configured at the hardware level "in the field" by the user after it has been manufactured, providing a level of computing flexibility that reaches far beyond the low-cost general-purpose microprocessors that are common today. The FPGA is composed of arrays of programmable logic blocks, and the configuration and interconnection of these blocks is defined in a file and instantiated on the FPGA when it boots. Specialized hardware for signal processing and high-performance computing, formerly the domain of large corporations capable of designing and manufacturing application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs), can now be written in software and realized on an FPGA by anyone with a USB cable and knowledge of a Hardware Description Language (HDL).

After introducing FPGAs and their place in today's computing ecosystem, I will present an overview of their potential relevance to chemical engineering process control, analysis, and instrumentation and an exploration of their performance characteristics in the context of the practical implementation of FPGA-based high-speed real-time process controllers for laboratory applications.