Why FPGAs Are Critical to High-Reliability Custom Product Development

Why FPGAs Are Critical to High-Reliability Custom Product Development

By Alan Katze | President, Presco Engineering

As advanced hardware systems push the limits of speed, sensitivity, and real-time control, Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) have become a foundational technology for custom product development. Across quantum hardware, photonics, life sciences, and analytical instrumentation, FPGAs enable deterministic timing, low-latency data handling, and system architectures that general-purpose processors cannot deliver.

At Presco Engineering, FPGA development is not treated as an isolated discipline. It is tightly integrated with electronics design, embedded software, mechanical and optical engineering, industrial design, and manufacturing considerations to support products that must perform reliably outside the lab and at scale.

From the First FPGAs to Modern System

FPGAs emerged in the mid-1980s as a new class of programmable hardware. Early innovations from Altera and Xilinx introduced reprogrammable logic and established the architectural foundations that modern FPGAs still build upon today.

Presco Engineering began working with programmable logic as these technologies entered the market and has continued designing FPGA-based systems as the platforms evolved in scale, speed, and complexity. As FPGAs matured from configurable logic into system-defining components, Presco incorporated them into increasingly demanding applications requiring precise timing, deterministic behavior, and long-term reliability. Presco Engineering was later recognized as the first Xilinx Design Center in Connecticut.

Today, Presco works across AMD Xilinx, Intel Altera, and Lattice platforms, supporting products that demand high-speed data acquisition, precise control, and extended product lifecycles. That same architectural flexibility that defined early FPGAs is what makes them indispensable today for quantum control electronics, photonics instrumentation, and other high-performance systems.

What Modern FPGAs Enable in Real Products

Modern FPGAs sit at the center of many high-stakes systems where precision, performance, and reliability are not optional. In these environments, small technical failures can lead to lost data, delayed programs, regulatory risk, or costly redesigns.

In a next-generation DNA sequencing system, Presco was tasked with capturing ultra-faint hydrogen ion signals with a noise floor approaching theoretical limits. The system required a high-speed, high-resolution ADC pipeline, FPGA-based lossless data compression, and ultra-low-noise electronics operating over long observation windows. The core challenge was maintaining signal integrity and timing determinism as 1/f noise and system drift became dominant factors. By tightly coupling FPGA architecture with custom electronics, firmware, and system validation, Presco delivered a production-ready instrument that helped position the company for a $750M acquisition shortly after launch.

In another project, Presco developed a data acquisition system for a time-of-flight mass spectrometer.  The ion sensor required 1.5GHz analog bandwidth and a 3Gsps analog-to-digital (ADC) converter.  We developed the pre-amp for the ion sensor and the main circuit board that contained fixed gain stages, a digitally variable attenuator, and a digitally variable offset control signal path feeding the ADC.  The ADC data was captured in an AMD Zynq UltraScale+ FPGA where we wrote the code to capture, process and offload the data.

Why Validation Matters as Much as Design

One of the most common risks in FPGA-based products is insufficient system-level validation. Designs that function in simulation or early prototypes often encounter issues when deployed in real operating environments, where system interactions, usage variability, and long-term behavior reveal hidden failure modes.

Presco mitigates this risk through a proprietary FPGA testbench framework that validates designs in realistic system conditions and supports regression testing across the full product. This approach reduces downstream risk and helps ensure a smoother transition from development into manufacturing.

Let Your Team Focus on the Core Innovation

Many teams working in quantum hardware, photonics, and advanced instrumentation come to Presco so they can stay focused on their core innovation, whether that is physics, optics, or novel sensing techniques. Presco takes ownership of FPGA architecture, development, verification, and integration, alongside the broader electronics, firmware, and manufacturing effort required to ship a real product.

Clients retain full ownership of their intellectual property, and Presco provides complete documentation to support long-term maintenance, iteration, and internal knowledge transfer.

If your system depends on precise timing, high-speed data handling, or deterministic control, FPGA development is not just a technical detail. It is a strategic enabler.

If you are exploring custom FPGA development for quantum hardware, photonics, or other high-performance products, we invite you to reach out and start a conversation with our engineering team.