>What do people in this forum see is the future of FPGA 4 to 5 years down the line?
I see FPGAs displacing processors:
http://www.fhpca.org/
http://www.celoxica.com/
http://fpgajournal.com/articles_2005/20050118_lang.htm

>What are the applications it is most widely used right now, and what will be the applications that it will be highly used in a near future?
Moving from parallel processing and custom control logic towards custom
embedded applications; I do not mean software running on a soft/hard
embedded processor but the actual application in its gate level
representation (a gate level packet sorting and forwarding app
_WITHOUT_ the RTOS overhead, etc.)

>power and clock speed as major bottlenecks?
I believe Moore's law has proven that processes and design
methodologies have kept u:, I have very high expectations on the
EDA/CAD vendors to continue providing ways to manage these.

My $0.02,

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Alfredo