title: efficient integration of FPGA into computer system
body: <p>FPGA's are used widely in the industry to gain better performance by implementing programs on the FPGA instead of software.</p>
  
  <p><strong>How do these companies efficiently integrate the FPGA's into their systems?</strong></p>
  
  <p>I have very limited experience with FPGA's and have only used them by hooking them up with USB and serial ports, which I guess isn't the best way to get the most out of your FPGA implementation. </p>
  
  <p>So what does these companies do?, Do they for example use some special FPGA's that can be inserted into a PCI slot in a computer system, or do they maybe buy some special SoC with integrated FPGA that can easily be overwritten by the programmers?</p>
  
  <p><em>I have most experience with programming in high level languages very very far away from the hardware, so I'm sorry if the question sounds stupid -I just don't have much knowledge and experience with the lower layers :). But I once had a course in which we used FPGA's and it was a very mind opening experience. So now I'm dreaming of having a computer system where I can code up some parts in a high level language which then does some communication to an integrated FPGA on which I have uploaded some synthesized VHDL.</em></p>
  
  <p><em>Maybe one could even code up programs consisting of both high level code and some VHDL which is automatically synthesized and uploaded to the FPGA board when the program is started... That would be so awesome!</em></p>