ASICs, FPGAs, GPs, ASIPs: A Comparison

Field Programmable Gate Arrays are currently competing with Applications Specific Integrated Circuits, General Purpose Processors, Digital Signal Processors. Application Specific Instruction Processors are also competing with FPGAs!. How do we measure the gap between all these different technologies? What is the best technology for a specific application? When should a designer prefer to use an ASIC over an FPGA or an ASIP? You are required to compare between these different technologies in terms of performance, power area, tools used. You are also required to justify when an application would be more suitable for mapping on one technology over the other.

Resources/Papers:

1. Measuring the Gap Between FPGAs and ASICs (PDF)
2. Reconfigurable Radio With FPGA-Based Applicatio-Specific Processors (PDF)
3. Application Specific Instruction Generation for Configurable Processor Architectures (PDF)
4. When Will FPGAs kill ASICs? (PDF)

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This page is maintained by Shawki Areibi, sareibi@uoguelph.ca
Last modified April 2008