FPGA - technical definition

(Field Programmable Gate Array) A type of gate array that is programmed in the field rather than in a semiconductor fab. Containing up to hundreds of thousands of gates, there are a variety of FPGA architectures on the market. Some are very sophisticated, including not only programmable logic elements, but programmable interconnects and switches between the elements. The interconnects take up a lot of FPGA real estate, resulting in a chip with very low gate density compared to ASICs. In 2008, Altera introduced its Stratix IV FPGA with 2.5 billion transistors and 680K logic elements.