The last features we will review are embedded multipliers. Spartan-3 was the first low-cost FPGA that featured hard 18 X 18-bit embedded multipliers. These are very useful for embedding high performance DSP functions and they consume less power than fabric-implemented multipliers. Spartan-3 has from four to 104 embedded multipliers and these can be used for implementing an 18 X 18-bit signed or a 17 X 17-bit unsigned operation. Each embedded multiplier has a 1:1 association with block RAMs because they are mostly used to implement [Mac] function. This allows you to multiply using the embedded multipliers and do a cumulative function inside the memory.