= Field-programmable gate array
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= FPGA
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= FPGAs
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It basically replaces a bunch of discrete <digital> components with a single chip. So you don't have to wire things manually.
Particularly fundamental if you would be putting those chips up a thousand cell towers for signal processing, and ever felt the need to reprogram them! Resoldering would be fun, would it? So you just do a over the wire update of everything.
Vs a <microcontroller>: same reason why you would want to use discrete components: speed. Especially when you want to do a bunch of things in parallel fast.
One limitation is that it only handles digital electronics: https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/25525/are-there-any-analog-fpgas There are some analog analogs, but they are much more restricted due to signal loss, which is exactly what digital electronics is very good at mitigating.
\Video[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gl4CuzOH6I4]
{title=First FPGA experiences with a Digilent Cora Z7 Xilinx Zynq by <Marco Reps> (2018)}
{description=Good video, actually gives some rationale of a use case that a <microcontroller> wouldn't handle because it is not fast enough.}
\Video[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zrqYy369NQ]
{title=FPGA Dev Board Tutorial by Ben Heck (2016)}
\Video[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-8G1Yixb34]
{title=The History of the FPGA by <Asianometry> (2022)}