1. Purpose and scope
This stage turns an approved product idea into requirements that engineers can design against and into a firm choice of FPGA device. Unlike a custom chip project, the team does not design silicon. It chooses an existing commercial device, so the most important decisions here are what the product must do, which functions belong in programmable logic rather than in a processor or in software, and which device family and size give enough logic, memory, I/O and signal processing resources with room to grow.
The stage also sets the economic and supply frame for the rest of the life of the product. The device is usually one of the most expensive and longest lead time parts on the board, it fixes the board's power supplies and thermal design, and its own lifecycle at the vendor limits how long the product can be built without a redesign.
In scope: product requirements, hardware and software partitioning, resource and power estimates, device family and package choice, availability and lifecycle checks, and an early view of security and compliance needs. Out of scope: detailed block design, pin assignment and board layout, which follow in System & FPGA Architecture.
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