Atmel FPGA design course - part 1:

In professional electronics today, some of the greatest advances have been made in the field of programmable devices, especially those designed to implement logic functions. From using boards full of discrete logic devices (typically 74 series devices), now many complex functions are often implemented in a single programmable device. This is achieved by the use of devices with an ever-growing number of ‘gates’ and pins. Today, these devices are almost always Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs).