This year marks the 40th anniversary of one of the most exciting and interesting aspects of electronic engineering: the FPGA. The first commercially viable FPGA introduced in 1985 was the Xilinx XC2064, which provided developers with 64 configurable logic blocks, each with a three-input look-up tables.
From tiny acorns mighty OAK trees grow. Forty years later, the largest AMD (the successor to Xilinx) FPGA contains 8.9 million system logic cells, providing 8.2 million flip flops and 4 million look up tables, quite an increase on the original 64 LUTs.
It is not just the increase in CLBs and registers that distinguish modern FPGAs from their predecessors. Modern devices contain entire processing systems with a range of Arm® processing cores, multi giga bit transceivers, block memory, digital signal processing elements, memory controllers, AI acceleration capabilities and I/O cells which are exceptionally flexible and support a range of standards across single and differential interfaces.
Let’s take a look back at some of the very early days of FPGAs.
The XC2064 sold for $55, which is roughly equivalent to $165 in 2025. By the end of its commercial life 15 years later, it was available for $5 (or about $15 in today’s prices). The PCN announcing the XC2000 family discontinuation was announced in December 1996, with final deliveries in June 1999.
The introduction of the first FPGA led to a seismic shift in how electronic designers could create digital logic solutions. Pretty quickly, designs that had required a complete circuit board could be implemented within the XC2064 and its larger brother, the XC2018 (which offered 100 CLBs). Within two years of the XC2000 family being introduced, the XC3000 (1987) was in production, which ranged from 64 CLBs to 484 CLBs in the largest. By 1989, the first million FPGA devices had been sold. Xilinx would go for an IPO a year later in 1990, and swiftly introduce it third FPGA family, the XC4000 in 1991. The XC4000XL from this family became the first 3v3 FPGAs.
The fourth generation of devices moved from numerical names to those that we are familiar with today: Virtex and Spartan, etc.
Programming these original FPGAs was very different to today. High level meant the ability to enter the design using Boolean expressions, Karnaugh maps or truth tables. Using Xilinx Design Editor (XDE), this enabled the designer to work with all of the logic and routing resources within the target device.
XDE was very much a physical design editor. As FPGAs became more viable and grew in capability, Xilinx wanted to enable developers to be able to leverage the time to market benefit of FPGAs. As such, they worked on development of logical to physical design and automatic place and route.
By 1996, around the time FPGAs were brought to my attention while at university, FPGAs resembled something a modern FPGA developer might recognise. They could be developed using HDLs, and provided MAP and Place and Route with implementation engines. IP cores with Core Generator were also starting to emerge. We were really off the starting blocks.
My first professional interaction with FPGAs was designing a Virtex-E M, which I talked about here. Since then, I have developed FPGAs for a wide range of applications, from submarines, to nuclear reactors, aerospace, defence, data centre, automotive, robotics and space. FPGAs play a large role in these and many other applications, and will for many years to come.
UK FPGA Conference
FPGA Horizons - October 7th 2025 - THE FPGA Conference, find out more here.
Workshops and Webinars:
If you enjoyed the blog why not take a look at the free webinars, workshops and training courses we have created over the years. Highlights include:
Upcoming Webinars Timing, RTL Creation, FPGA Math and Mixed Signal
Professional PYNQ Learn how to use PYNQ in your developments
Introduction to Vivado learn how to use AMD Vivado
Ultra96, MiniZed & ZU1 three day course looking at HW, SW and PetaLinux
Arty Z7-20 Class looking at HW, SW and PetaLinux
Mastering MicroBlaze learn how to create MicroBlaze solutions
HLS Hero Workshop learn how to create High Level Synthesis based solutions
Perfecting Petalinux learn how to create and work with PetaLinux OS
Boards
Get an Adiuvo development board:
Adiuvo Embedded System Development board - Embedded System Development Board
Adiuvo Embedded System Tile - Low Risk way to add a FPGA to your design.
Embedded System Book
Do you want to know more about designing embedded systems from scratch? Check out our book on creating embedded systems. This book will walk you through all the stages of requirements, architecture, component selection, schematics, layout, and FPGA / software design. We designed and manufactured the board at the heart of the book! The schematics and layout are available in Altium here Learn more about the board (see previous blogs on Bring up, DDR validation, USB, Sensors) and view the schematics here.