What are the advantage of FPGAs than ASICs?
Traditional design methods using only ASSP or ASIC have major drawbacks. The functionality of ASSP is prefabricated and it is difficult to support the latest technology, which manufacturers cannot use to highlight product advantages. The ASIC has a long development cycle and is difficult to adapt to the short product cycle of the consumer market. Therefore, the new design approach should be very flexible, can be quickly innovated, and start-up development costs are low. For system designers, this means using a combination of programmable logic devices (PLDs) and ASICs or ASSPs to remain competitive in the consumer electronics market, respond flexibly to changes in demand, and highlight product advantages.
ASSP: Special Standard Products
ASIC: ASIC
Relying solely on ASICs and ASSPs will force manufacturers to postpone product releases, resulting in outdated product functionality. The PLD/ASIC-ASSP approach ensures rapid innovation and a leading position in the industry. When designing increased throughput, this design approach can effectively combine FPGA-to-structured ASIC migration to achieve rapid, low-risk mass production.
FPGA advantages:
Low power consumption
Flexible and programmable
The consumer electronics market is very demanding on the cost and power requirements of the product. In addition, product differentiation is also the key to manufacturers' success. The programmable nature of the FPGA gives the product the unique flexibility to implement any digital circuit you want to implement, and you can customize a variety of circuits. The advantages of FPGA in the field of consumer electronics are reflected in a "fast" word with a short development cycle.
FPGA flexibility is reflected in the reduction of the constraints of dedicated chips, truly tailored to their own products, FPGAs can be flexibly changed design during the design process. And its powerful logic resources and register resources allow you to easily use the design concept, its parallel execution, hardware implementation can deal with a large number of high-speed electronic circuit design needs in the design.
Another benefit of using FPGA's programmable features is that it can reduce inventory. System vendors use the same PCB to support different market needs and functions around the world, and each configuration can achieve different functions.
On the whole, FPGAs have shorter design cycles and flexibility than ASICs (dedicated chips), which are ideal for products that need to be quickly brought to market, eliminating the need for expensive opening costs, and can be cut at any time to increase the functionality you want. Achieve evasion of design risks and avoid the limitations of chip manufacturers. In addition, with the advancement of technology, the NRE (one-time engineering) cost required for ASIC products is getting higher and higher. Due to the constraints of enterprise R&D funds, ASIC has been replaced by FPGA in many market segments.