This study proposes a multi-function power system protective relay hardware design built with various functional hardware processing cores on the field programmable gate array (FPGA). This practical and systematic method lends itself to a paralleled and pipelined hardware emulation of individual signal processing and protection components. Detailed emulation designs are presented for the following protective relays: distance, directional overcurrent, voltage, and frequency protection. The necessary signal processing functions required to operate these relays are also emulated, allowing the protection system to be stand-alone and fed with instantaneous fault data. Real-time experimental results are presented to verify the functions of the target hardware relay on the Xilinx® Virtex-7 FPGA. Case studies provide the efficacy of the multi-function relay design in terms of accuracy, latency, and resource consumption.