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The industrial sector is the second largest application area for FPGAs after communications, accounting for 17% of the global application scope; in the domestic market, it may exceed 30%. Benefiting from the trends of industrial intelligence and automation, the demand for FPGAs, characterized by high efficiency, real-time performance, and high flexibility, will continue to grow in the industrial sector.
The increasing demand for precise control and the coexistence of more protocols/standards in the industrial sector are driving the growth of FPGAs. The industrial sector has many sub-markets, which can be roughly divided into six major categories: control/production/testing, industrial vision/security/infrared, instrumentation, laser processing, industrial communication, and semiconductor simulation.
1) In the control/production/testing field, the low-latency processing of FPGAs can achieve precise, jitter-free servo drives (compared to traditional dedicated chips that can only control a single motor, FPGA chips can control multiple motors across channels. Currently, the power consumed by driving motors accounts for a significant portion of global energy consumption. With the trend towards energy conservation and environmental protection, FPGA chips that can precisely control motors and manage multiple motors on a single chip will see more applications in industrial control);
2) In the industrial camera field, the highly parallel architecture and deterministic latency of FPGAs enable real-time image processing, such as defect detection on USB drives on production lines and coal sorting on conveyor belts;
3) In the instrumentation field, FPGAs are commonly used in oscilloscopes, signal sources, and other devices, responsible for the high-quality generation and processing of real-time signals;
4) In the laser processing field, FPGAs are used in the electronic control systems of lasers;
5) In the industrial communication field, the high flexibility of FPGAs can adapt to the evolving TSN standards, commonly used in industrial-grade switches and other products;
6) In the semiconductor field, large chip commercial simulation platforms typically utilize the largest contemporary FPGAs. Before the release of the 7nm VP1902 (Versal Premium) on June 2023, Xilinx’s largest FPGA was the 16nm VU19P (Virtex UltraScale) launched in 2019, often a preferred choice for major commercial semiconductor simulation platforms such as Cadence Protium x2 and Mentor/Siemens EDA’s Veloce, directly used for prototyping and verification of ultra-large chips like Nvidia GPUs.
In summary:
The main application scenarios of FPGAs in the industrial sector and their reasons are as follows:
High parallel low-latency processing (industrial vision, servo control, instrumentation);
Highly flexible and low-cost solutions (protocol bridging).
Additionally, the growth drivers are:
Increasing demand for high-precision control in the industrial sector → Growing demand for low-latency signal processing → Increased FPGA penetration;
Coexistence of more protocols/standards in the industrial sector, requiring more fine-tuning on-site → Need for universal bridging and highly flexible reprogrammable solutions → Increased FPGA penetration.
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