> Aren't FPGA's used mostly to test/design a circuit that you would then go on to actually fabricate/build?
We use FPGAs in cell sorting because we need to make decisions off of high dimensional data with low latency. The cells moving through our system have velocities higher than 1 m/s. They flow past a set of lasers and wind up in a droplet less than a millisecond later so we need to make a decision whether or not to sort a droplet within that time frame. We don't use ASICs because we don't move enough volume to justify the startup cost.
We use FPGAs in cell sorting because we need to make decisions off of high dimensional data with low latency. The cells moving through our system have velocities higher than 1 m/s. They flow past a set of lasers and wind up in a droplet less than a millisecond later so we need to make a decision whether or not to sort a droplet within that time frame. We don't use ASICs because we don't move enough volume to justify the startup cost.