  Growing global concerns about climate change highlight the need for
environmentally sustainable computing. The ecological impact of computing,
including operational and embodied, is a key consideration. Field Programmable
Gate Arrays (FPGAs) stand out as promising sustainable computing platforms due
to their reconfigurability across various applications. This paper introduces
GreenFPGA, a tool estimating the total carbon footprint (CFP) of FPGAs over
their lifespan, considering design, manufacturing, reconfigurability (reuse),
operation, disposal, and recycling. Using GreenFPGA, the paper evaluates
scenarios where the ecological benefits of FPGA reconfigurability outweigh
operational and embodied carbon costs, positioning FPGAs as a environmentally
sustainable choice for hardware acceleration compared to Application-Specific
Integrated Circuits (ASICs). Experimental results show that FPGAs have lower
CFP than ASICs, particularly for multiple distinct, low-volume applications, or
short application lifespans.
