Field-Programmable Gate Array, FPGA

A specialized computer component that is essentially a chip full of low-level computer logic gates that can be reprogrammed to implement algorithms for specific workloads. FPGAs can also include other components with their logic gate array like dedicated on-chip memory or small built-in accelerators for certain types of low-level computations. FPGAs give a way to create an arbitrary reprogrammable chip for some specialized purpose—like video transcoding, signal processing, cryptography, or even the implementation of whole system-on-a-chip architectures. These components are seeing increased use in HPC as of late and are becoming more popular for a wide variety of workloads in a number of fields.