Structured ASICs: Opportunities and Challenges

  • Authors:
  • Behrooz Zahiri

  • Affiliations:
  • -

  • Venue:
  • ICCD '03 Proceedings of the 21st International Conference on Computer Design
  • Year:
  • 2003

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Abstract

There is currently a huge gap between the two main technologiesused to implement custom digital integrated circuit (IC) designs.At one end of the spectrum are field programmable gate arrays(FPGAs). These devices have relatively low design costs and shortdesign times, but they also have high per-unit costs and arelimited interms of design size, complexity, and performance. At theother end of the device continuum are application specificintegrated circuits (ASICs). These components have exceedingly highdesign costs and take a long time to develop, but they can supportextremely large, complex,and high-performance designs, and theyhave low per-unit costs in large production runs. A new category ofdevices - known as structured ASICs - is now becoming available.These devices bridge the gap between FPGAs and ASICs in terms ofcost and capabilities, but they also pose challenges to devicemanufacturers and design tool vendors.