Performance Comparison
Millions of MACs per Second
Notes:
DSP processors have also benefited from IC process technology. First
through higher clock rates and then by adding multiple MAC units in an
attempt to turn a sequential machine into a parallel processor but the
development effort to launch a new processor is becoming a limiting factor.
FPGAs are inherently scalable parallel processing machines. They benefit
from increasing clock speed (results from narrower feature size), but also
automatically benefit from the exponential growth in capacity (Moore’s
law). The performance combination of clock speed and the number of logic
cells resulted in an 7 times improvement from the 4085 to the V1000.
DSP processors are a good solution for low performance applications
and algorithms that require many decision points but for high performance
applications FPGAs will continue to have a significant advantage