> The actual design was implemented in a Xilinx Spartan-3E 1600 development board. This is basically the biggest FPGA you can buy that doesn’t cost thousands of dollars for a devkit.
Note that this bit is rather outdated. :) The FPGA on an entry-level development board (like a Xilinx Artix-7 35T) is comparable in size -- as well as much faster! -- and you can go even bigger without stretching your budget too much.
If you're willing to get a little adventurous, in fact, you can get an FPGA that's over ten times the size for under $200: