Modern CPUs are awesome. You can play games, create content,
and even watch tech explainer videos with handsome hosts,
I guess it was supposed to be someone else, on the same machine.
But as great as this versatility is, there are times when you'd really rather have a chip
that can do just one thing, but do it really, really well.
Now there are lots of electronics that contain chips called A6 or FPGAs
instead of regular CPUs. And we're gonna explain what these are one at a time,
starting with A6. Not to be confused with the shoe company,
A6 stands for Application Specific Integrated Circuit
and it does exactly what it sounds like, processes data for one application.
This is because A6 are built very differently from your typical x86 or ARM or RISC-5 general processor.
A regular processor can apply many different kinds of calculations depending on what a program needs,
but A6 are hardwired to perform only the calculations
or to run only the algorithms that are needed for a specific task.
This hardwiring can happen in a couple of ways. Some A6 are manufactured in what's called
a semi-custom manner, where the fab has what's essentially
a blank template of logic gates, which are then permanently connected
according to the design the client needs. Meanwhile, other A6 are full custom designs
where the entire chip and every transistor is pretty much designed from scratch.
Unsurprisingly, because A6 are so specialized, they take a lot of time and money to develop.
But because A6 are usually for small, highly integrated devices that ship lots of units,
the cost of an individual A6 tends to be quite low.
For example, the chips inside USB chargers or network switches or even electronic toys are often A6,
but all of these are often low-cost products. Network switches are particularly interesting applications
since a simple $15 unmanaged switch can handle network traffic better
than a desktop CPU that costs 10 times as much.
But of course, there's a good chance you've heard of ASIC-based crypto miners
designed to run cryptographic hashes much more efficiently than a graphics card can.
And those are quite expensive due to both demand
and the fact that they aren't as mass-produced as other ASIC-based devices.
And of course, there's the fact that they make you money.
Let's switch gears right now and talk about FPGAs or field programmable gate arrays.
How are those different? You can think of these as sitting somewhere
between an ASIC and a CPU. Their logic can be customized for specific applications,
but unlike ASICs, they can actually be electrically
reprogrammed after they've been manufactured.
You can think of the structure of an FPGA as being kind of like Lego blocks.
Once you put them together, they'll stay that way, but you can always take them apart
and put them back together and make something completely different.
Now, although FPGAs aren't quite as powerful as purpose-built ASICs,
their versatility has made them increasingly popular for machine learning applications
as they can be optimized for different AI models in neural networks, yet still outperform
traditional CPUs and even GPUs.
But perhaps even more interesting is that you can reconstruct
other kinds of processors inside an FPGA,
including the ones from, say, for example, retro game consoles.
There have been some really cool projects that use an FPGA to recreate the retro gaming experience
as faithfully as possible, such as the NT Mini and the Mega SG from Analog.
The FPGAs inside those consoles contain circuitry
that very closely mimics the original NES
and Sega Genesis processors, respectively, meaning that it's a much smoother
and more accurate experience than software emulation, like what gets used by those classic plug-and-play consoles
that have gained popularity recently. Another really awesome FPGA project is the MR,
another gaming device that actually allows you to choose between different old-school consoles and arcade games
than reprogram the FPGA on the fly according to what you want to play.
It's kind of like a transformer, but on the inside,
like that time I washed down a Mentos with a bottle of Pepsi.
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