4 ms·
> ASICs, on the other hand, are custom-built ICs which are designed to very efficiently perform one task, like performing SHA hashes or h.264 decoding. ASICs a
by gh02t 8y ago
> ASICs, on the other hand, are custom-built ICs which are designed to very efficiently perform one task, like performing SHA hashes or h.264 decoding.
ASICs aren't necessarily task specific, you can do whatever you want in an ASIC.
Your unit cost analysis isn't quite right either, because what really matters is scale. The primary cost tradeoff between an FPGA and an ASIC is strongly dependent on manufacturing scale. ASICs have high design and tooling costs, but low unit cost after that. FPGAs on the other hand have much lower initial cost, but higher unit cost. Whether or not it makes sense to use an ASIC depends largely on whether or not you're going to ship enough units to amortize the setup costs, hence why a lot of manufacturers often design a single ASIC to be used across multiple products.
- jrockway 8y agoEven then, FPGAs are now pretty inexpensive at scale. Open up your favorite $5000 oscilloscope and it will probably have a proprietary ASIC. Open up your favorite $400 oscilloscope and it just has an off-the-shelf FPGA. Mine even runs Linux, apparently. (As an aside, I broke my $400 'scope about a month after purchasing it. One of the rotary encoders just stopped turning and is now jammed and it would be quite the undertaking to repair it. I learned my lesson.)
- pitaj 8y ago> ASICs aren't necessarily task specific, you can do whatever you want in an ASIC. I mean, it's stands for "application specific" so it's really just a matter of semantics. > Your unit cost analysis isn't quite right either Yeah I realize now my unit cost analysis is confusing. `++` means "best unit cost" aka "least expensive". I forgot to go into the scale issue more, which is where FPGAs can really come into the equation as a good middle ground between unit cost at scale and development cost.