Application-specific integrated circuit facts for kids

ASIC or Application-specific integrated circuit is a kind of integrated circuit. It is built for a particular use instead of for general-purpose use. Digital circuits are a common form of ASIC, but analog ASICs were manufactured beginning in the latter half of the 1990s.

ASIC has advantages compared to Programmable Logic Device or Standard Logic IC.

1. ASIC has a miniaturized embodiment size.
2. ASIC can improve speed.
3. ASIC needs less electric power to operate.

There are also disadvantages of ASIC.

1. the cost per a unit can be high when producing a small number of units because of the cost in producing a Photomask.
2. they can be hard to design and it is expensive and wastes time if they need to be redesigned.
3. the time of a manufacturing process can be long.

Design

Design of ASIC is gate array design, cell base design, embedded array design, standard cell design, and structured ASIC design.

Gate array design has elementary gate circuit at first base, (we) manufacture the products with putting ordered proper wire-layers. Manufacturing is quick because a finished product needs only production of wire-layers and it is cheap because of mass production of its foundation. However, because (we) form a circuit with formation of standard gate, it has worse contact rate and efficiency.

Cell base design uses wire-layer between block that was designed and arranged and logical circuit. and product is manufactured . Performance is better than gate array, but time of making cell base is longer than time of making gate array, and cost of making cell base is more expensive than cost of making gate array.

Embedded array design Use finished functional block were located. It was rest of theory for wired to use part of gate array. It was called that gate array and basis of cell were compromising.

Standard cell design is a general term for gate array, cell base, embedded array. if standard cell is cell base IC, direction is different each company.

Structured ASIC design uses customization of standard subsystems to speed design and production. Designers of ASIC use a hardware description language (HDL) such as Verilog or VHDL to describe the functionality of the design.

Images for kids

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  A tray of application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) chips

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  Microscope photograph of a gate-array ASIC showing the predefined logic cells and custom interconnections. This particular design uses less than 20% of available logic gates.

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  Microscope photograph of custom ASIC (486 chipset) showing gate-based design on top and custom circuitry on bottom

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  Renesas M66591GP: USB2.0 Peripheral Controller

See also

In Spanish: Circuito integrado de aplicación específica para niños