[westbywest]

MSCoE here. FPGAs have limited applicability due to their high cost per unit and relatively low clock speeds. They were all the rage ~15 years ago during my grad study, but then flattened out. Although, it does look like they're bouncing back, likely due to newfound popularity for mining, and cheaper/better product lines coming out. Cheap, embedded stuff based on MIPS, ARM, even mobile processors like NVidia Tegra, will probably enjoy an order of magnitude broader market footprint, however.

[moftz]

I work in aerospace, FPGAs are the dominant chip. Everything from basic microprocessors to complex SDRs all run on them. Xilinx is the big one but there are smaller shops making more application-specific chips.