Career in FPGAs

The job scenario in field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs)  has seen an uptrend in last few years due to their wide usage in different areas.A FPGA is an integrated circuit designed to be configured  by the customer and designer after manufacture.The FPGA configuration is generally specified using a Hardware description language(HDL). 

FPGAs when used 25 years ago was just a simple technology.What has changed scenario or outlook for FPGA in last few years is because of two main factors.Earlier,people could easily create any logic on FPGAs  but now these are more technical in nature.

            FPGAs come with high speed interfaces and serial communication protocols.since they are more capable technically, allow users to develop complex design and products that were not possible before.Application specific integrated circuits are an alternative to FPGAs so many markets can expect such high returns and more people opt to work on FPGA instead.So there is a wide scope for job opportunities for FPGA engineers.

                        In coming years engineers equipped with FPGA skillset will be in demand at two levels-technology/block development and implementation.From a technology standpoint,such skillset would be needed for block development and validation of custom differentiating  and reusable hardware logic.Secondly, from an implementation standpoint,they will be in demand to achieve optimization for high device utilization and performance.Many companies like Wipro,infosys and NI have divisions for FPGA engineers.This line offers creative and challenging work,which involves rapidprototyping of design ideas as well as verification of existing designs.

Almost any area with design and verification tasks will have a requirement for FPGA trained VLSI engineers.FPGAs can be bought and programmed for a particular application.These are mostly used in embedded computing sytems.All levels of companies-be it a manufacturer of high end products to low end products, have FPGAs in their system.The worl profile of FPGA engineers revolves across areas like software tool development, system design, IP design and IC design.