Editing Field-programmable gate array (section)

=== Hard blocks ===
Modern FPGA families expand upon the above capabilities to include higher-level functionality fixed in silicon. Having these common functions embedded in the circuit reduces the area required and gives those functions increased performance compared to building them from logical primitives. Examples of these include [[Binary multiplier|multipliers]], generic [[Digital signal processor|DSP blocks]], [[Microprocessor|embedded processors]], high-speed I/O logic and embedded [[Computer memory|memories]].

Higher-end FPGAs can contain high-speed [[multi-gigabit transceiver]]s and ''hard IP cores'' such as [[processor core]]s, [[Ethernet]] [[Medium access control|medium access control units]], [[Conventional PCI|PCI]] or [[PCI Express]] controllers, and external [[memory controller]]s. These cores exist alongside the programmable fabric, but they are built out of [[transistor]]s instead of LUTs so they have ASIC-level performance and power consumption without consuming a significant amount of fabric resources, leaving more of the fabric free for the application-specific logic. The multi-gigabit transceivers also contain high-performance [[signal conditioning]] circuitry along with high-speed serializers and deserializers, components that cannot be built out of LUTs. Higher-level physical layer (PHY) functionality such as [[line coding]] may or may not be implemented alongside the serializers and deserializers in hard logic, depending on the FPGA.