Using FPGAs for measurement, control

What is VHDL?
VHSIC Hardware Description Language (VHDL), where VHSIC is an acronym for Very High-Speed Integrated Circuits. It's an IEEE-standard HDL that was originally developed by the U.S. department of defence for documenting electronic systems. The language is specified in the IEEE 1076 standard and used to describe and simulate ICs and systems before fabrication. It is an alternative language to Verilog.

What is FPGA?
Short for Field-Programmable Gate Array, a type of logic chip that can be programmed. An FPGA is similar to a PLD, but whereas PLDs are generally limited to hundreds of gates, FPGAs support thousands of gates. They are especially popular for prototyping integrated circuit designs. Once the design is set, hardwired chips are produced for faster performance.

What is an algorithm?
An algorithm is a list of well-defined instructions for completing a task, such as computing an average value. Starting from an initial state, the instructions describe a computation that proceeds through a well-defined, though not necessarily deterministic, series of successive states, eventually terminating in a final ending state.