When it comes to platform ASICs, designers have a wide range of options. Platform and structured ASIC solutions offer faster time-to-market and lower development costs than full cell-based ASIC designs. Additionally, they deliver more performance than high-density field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs). Of course, you must evaluate your specific system needs and choose a platform ASIC accordingly.
Platform and structured ASICs have established themselves as attractive implementation options between custom-crafted cell-based ASICs and off-the-shelf FPGAs in terms of cost, performance, and complexity. These partially prefabricated chips can considerably reduce the mask costs and verification time and cost compared to a cell-based ASIC. They also can deliver higher performance and smaller chip sizes (and lower silicon costs) than high-density FPGAs.
Platform ASICs represent the higher end of this market segment. They tend to have more features than structured ASICs, offering more pre-integrated functionality in the form of multigigabit serializer/deserializers (SERDES), large amounts of embedded memory, phase-locked loops, and other functions.
Click here to download the PDF version of this entire article.