What is the difference and relationship between ASIC and FPGA?

The siege masters in the electronic technology industry should be familiar with the names ASIC, FPGA and MCU, but I believe that not everyone knows the difference and relationship between ASIC and FPGA. Below we will sort out in several ways Let's talk about the dispute between them!

ASIC vs FPGA

First understand the two brothers from the name

ASIC is the abbreviation of ApplicationSpecificIntegratedCircuit, the Chinese name is the application-specific integrated circuit, in general speaking, it is a chip customized according to the specific application!

FPGA is the abbreviation of FieldprogrammableGateArray, and the Chinese name is Field Programmable Gate Array, which is a chip that can be flexibly changed according to demand!

Respective advantages and disadvantages

The advantages of ASIC: since it is a customized chip, it must inevitably seek two lows and one high, that is, high performance, low cost and low power consumption! That's right, this is the biggest advantage of ASIC over FPGA.

Disadvantages of ASIC: Although the customized things can be as extreme as possible in terms of cost and performance, they are customized after all, that is to say, any algorithm circuit is finalized and cannot be modified.

The advantage of FPGA: FPGA is a programmable circuit, that is to say, it can be changed, as long as it is within the resources of FPGA, electronic design engineers can use it to build any desired circuit system, flexible and variable.

The disadvantage of FPGA: Compared with ASIC, FPGA's cost and power consumption are inferior. After all, there is no perfect thing.

Let's make a metaphor that is not particularly appropriate but very vivid: if ASIC is a good Superman model, then FPGA is a pile of blocks, and you can use the blocks to build a variety of models.

Design and development

From the perspective of design and development, the threshold of FPGA is much higher than that of ASIC. At present, Xilinx and Altera are the only mainstream FPGA design manufacturers in the world, which account for nearly 90% of the total market, which is a bit excessive. Although there are some small FPGA design manufacturers at home and abroad, it is difficult for small factories to make a big difference because of the high technical barriers and the technical barriers built by Xilinx and Altera, the two overlords with patents.

On the other hand, the situation of ASIC is quite different. There are hundreds of domestic and foreign ASIC design companies contending, whether it is high-end or low-end, domestic or foreign, manufacturers working in the ASIC field are lively! For example, international Intel, Apple, Samsung or domestic Huawei HiSilicon and many other small factories can make a difference in the ASIC field.

Applications

From the perspective of product application, ASIC and FPGA have different application scenarios due to their different innate characteristics. For example, FPGA is usually used to implement the interface control of immature communication protocol. Due to its flexibility, it can adapt to the variability of the protocol, and the development cycle is short, and the product can be launched quickly. ASIC is usually used to implement mature protocol standards or algorithm circuits. After it is completed, it can be mass-produced. It has high reliability and low cost, and is suitable for mature and large-scale product markets.

Employment and development

The main application areas of FPGAs are communications, industry, medical, security, military, and aerospace. Relatively speaking, the market is relatively small, and ASICs can be used in consumer electronics products in addition to the above-mentioned fields. This is an area with a very large market. Therefore, from this perspective, the prospects of ASIC are much broader, and of course there are many competitors. For personal employment, ASIC has a lot more jobs than FPGA.

Having said that, what is the relationship between the two brothers? In fact, they also have a very good relationship.

For example: FPGA development and ASIC digital front-end design are all practical digital circuit knowledge, the language used for development is also the same verilog and VHDL. Generally speaking, there is no absolute barrier for siege engineers engaged in ASIC digital design to switch to FPGA development, and vice versa. In addition, ASIC will also use FPGA for logic function verification during the R&D process. So although they have different lengths, they are also two brothers who love each other!

If you want to know more, our website has product specifications for ASIC and FPGA, you can go to ALLICDATA ELECTRONICS LIMITED to get more information