[errantspark]

Wait sorry back up a bit here. I can buy a laptop that has a daughter FPGA in it? Does it have GPIO??? Are we seriously building hardware worth buying again in 2024? Do you have a link?

[eightysixfour]

It isn't as fun as you think - they are setup for specific use cases and quite small. Here's a link to the software page: https://ryzenai.docs.amd.com/en/latest/index.html

The teeny-tiny "NPU," which is actually an FPGA, is 10 TOPS.

Edit: I've been corrected, not an FPGA, just an IP block from Xilinx.

[wtallis]

It's not a FPGA. It's an NPU IP block from the Xilinx side of the company. It was presumably originally developed to be run on a Xilinx FPGA, but that doesn't mean AMD did the stupid thing and actually fabbed a FPGA fabric instead of properly synthesizing the design for their laptop ASIC. Xilinx involvement does not automatically mean it's an FPGA.

[boomskats]

Yes, the one on the ryzen 7000 chips like the 7840u isn't massive, but that's the last gen model. The one they've just released with the HX370 chip is estimated at 50 TOPS, which is better than Qualcomm's ARM flagship that this post is about. It's a fivefold improvement in a single generation, it's pretty exciting.

A̵n̵d̵ ̵i̵t̵'̵s̵ ̵a̵n̵ ̵F̵P̵G̵A̵ It's not an FPGA

[dekhn]

If you want GPIOs, you don't need (or want) an FPGA.

I don't know the details of your use case, but I work with low level hardware driven by GPIOs and after a bit of investigation, concluded that having direect GPIO access in a modern PC was not necessary or desirable compared to the alternatives.

[errantspark]

I get a lot of use out of the PRUs on the BeagleboneBlack, I would absolutely get use out of an FPGA in a laptop.