Since their introduction in the 1985, field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) have become increasingly important to the electronics industry. They have the potential for higher performance and lower power consumption than microprocessors and compared with application specific integrated circuits (ASICs), offer lower non-recurrent engineering (NRE) costs, reduced development time, easier debugging and reduced risk. Since modern FPGAs can meet many of the performance requirements of ASICs, they are being increasingly used in their place. In this paper, some recent developments in FPGA devices, platforms and applications are reviewed, with a focus on high performance applications of this technology.