Comment by westbywest

MSCoE here. FPGAs have limited applicability due to their high cost per unit and relatively low clock speeds. They were all the rage ~15 years ago during my grad study, but then flattened out. Although, it does look like they're bouncing back, likely due to newfound popularity for mining, and cheaper/better product lines coming out. Cheap, embedded stuff based on MIPS, ARM, even mobile processors like NVidia Tegra, will probably enjoy an order of magnitude broader market footprint, however.