FPGA

Field-programmable gate array (FPGA). See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fpga

= Major Vendors=
 * Altera http://altera.com
 * Xilinx http://xilinx.com
 * Latice http://latice.com

= HDL - hardware description languages = VHDL Verilog MyHDL (Python based HDL)

= Cheap Dev Boards =

Altera based

 * DE0 by Terasic http://de0.terasic.com/
 * BEMICRO by Arrow Electronics