Application Specific Integrated Circuit Asic Technology

Application Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) Technology explores and discusses the different aspects of the ASIC technology experienced during the 1990s. The topics of the chapters range from the ASIC business, model, marketing, and development up to its testability, packaging, and quality and reliability. An introductory chapter begins the discussion and tackles the historical perspective and the classification of the ASIC technology. Chapters 2 and 3 cover the business side of the technology as it discusses the market dynamics and marketing strategies. The following chapters focus on the product itself and deal with the design and model and library development. Computer-aided design tools and systems are included in the discussion. Manufacturing and packaging of ASICs are also given attention in the book. Finally, the last three chapters present the application, testability, and reliability of ASIC technology. The text can be of most help to students in the fields of microelectronics, computer technology, and engineering.

This comprehensive book on application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) describes the latest methods in VLSI-systems design. ASIC design, using commercial tools and pre-designed cell libraries, is the fastest, most cost-effective, and least error-prone method of IC design. As a consequence, ASICs and ASIC-design methods have become increasingly popular in industry for a wide range of applications. The book covers both semicustom and programmable ASIC types. After describing the fundamentals of digital logic design and the physical features of each ASIC type, the book turns to ASIC logic design - design entry, logic synthesis, simulation, and test - and then to physical design - partitioning, floorplanning, placement, and routing. You will find here, in practical well-explained detail, everything you need to know to understand the design of an ASIC, and everything you must do to begin and to complete your own design. Features Broad coverage includes, in one information-packed volume, cell-based ICs, gate arrays, field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), and complex programmable logic devices (PLDs). Examples throughout the book have been checked with a wide range of commercial tools to ensure their accuracy and utility. Separate chapters and appendixes on both Verilog and VHDL, including material from IEEE standards, serve as a complete reference for high-level, ASIC-design entry. As in other landmark VLSI books published by Addison-Wesley - from Mead and Conway to Weste and Eshraghian - the author's teaching expertise and industry experience illuminate the presentation of useful design methods. Any engineer, manager, or student who is working with ASICs in a design project, or who is simply interested in knowing more about the different ASIC types and design styles, will find this book to be an invaluable resource, reference, and guide. 0201500221B04062001

The field of application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) is fast-paced being at the very forefront of modern nanoscale fabrication and presents a deeply engaging career path. ASICs can provide us with high-speed computation in the case of digital circuits. For example, central processing units, graphics processing units, field-programmable gate arrays, and custom-made digital signal processors are examples of ASICs and the transistors they are fabricated from. We can use that same technology complementary metal-oxide semiconductor processes to implement high-precision sensing of or interfacing to the world through analog-to-digital converters, digital-to-analog converters, custom image sensors, and highly integrated micron-scale sensors such as magnetometers, accelerometers, and microelectromechanical machines. ASIC technologies now transitioning toward magneto-resistive and phase-changing materials also offer digital memory capacities that have aided our technological progress. Combining these domains, we have moved toward big data analytics and the new era of artificial intelligence and machine learning. This book provides a small selection of chapters covering aspects of ASIC development and the surrounding business model.

he very name application-specific integrated circuit, or ASIC, con T notes an ability to provide a dense package for a highly complex design targeted at a focused, often complex solution. The ability to create customized high-performance designs has come of age, facilitated by so phisticated tools that enable designers to cope with ever-increasing de mands for added product functionality, features, and complexity. Most designers are trained in the traditional methods of approaching complex digital electronics with standard parts but have little, if any, exposure to custom or even semicustom integrated circuit design. Most see only a broad survey of IC technology. This book is targeted at the new ASIC designer who is getting ready to tackle that first ASIC design and is concerned about the unknowns that lie ahead. Economic and perfor mance considerations as well as tool capability and process fabrication quality have evolved to the point where consideration of ASIC design is now commonplace in an ever-increasing number of electronic systems designs. Engineers are now given the challenge of coping not only with new technologies but with new design methodologies that are fundamen tally necessary and advantageous to support new competitive high-tech products. Laypeople and engineers alike have marveled at the advances made over the years in electronics' complexity, performance, density, and cost. The migration of systems to modules to boards to integrated circuits clearly underscores the radical transition that the physical incarnation of electronics has undergone.

he very name application-specific integrated circuit, or ASIC, con T notes an ability to provide a dense package for a highly complex design targeted at a focused, often complex solution. The ability to create customized high-performance designs has come of age, facilitated by so phisticated tools that enable designers to cope with ever-increasing de mands for added product functionality, features, and complexity. Most designers are trained in the traditional methods of approaching complex digital electronics with standard parts but have little, if any, exposure to custom or even semicustom integrated circuit design. Most see only a broad survey of IC technology. This book is targeted at the new ASIC designer who is getting ready to tackle that first ASIC design and is concerned about the unknowns that lie ahead. Economic and perfor mance considerations as well as tool capability and process fabrication quality have evolved to the point where consideration of ASIC design is now commonplace in an ever-increasing number of electronic systems designs. Engineers are now given the challenge of coping not only with new technologies but with new design methodologies that are fundamen tally necessary and advantageous to support new competitive high-tech products. Laypeople and engineers alike have marveled at the advances made over the years in electronics' complexity, performance, density, and cost. The migration of systems to modules to boards to integrated circuits clearly underscores the radical transition that the physical incarnation of electronics has undergone.

Beginning in the mid 1980's, VLSI technology had begun to advance in two directions. Pushing the limit of integration, ULSI (Ultra Large Scale Integration) represents the frontier of the semiconductor processing technology in the campaign to conquer the submicron realm. The application of ULSI, however, is at present largely confined in the area of memory designs, and as such, its impact on traditional, microprocessor-based system design is modest. If advancement in this direction is merely a natural extrapolation from the previous integration generations, then the rise of ASIC (Application-Specific Integrated Circuit) is an unequivocal signal that a directional change in the discipline of system design is in effect. In contrast to ULSI, ASIC employs only well proven technology, and hence is usually at least one generation behind the most advanced processing technology. In spite of this apparent disadvantage, ASIC has become the mainstream of VLSI design and the technology base of numerous entrepreneurial opportunities ranging from PC clones to supercomputers. Unlike ULSI whose complexity can be hidden inside a memory chip or a standard component and thus can be accommodated by traditional system design methods, ASIC requires system designers to master a much larger body of knowledge spanning from processing technology and circuit techniques to architecture principles and algorithm characteristics. Integrating knowledge in these various areas has become the precondition for integrating devices and functions into an ASIC chip in a market-oriented environment. But knowledge is of two kinds.

Field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), which are pre-fabricated, programmable digital integrated circuits (ICs), provide easy access to state-of-the-art integrated circuit process technology, and in doing so, democratize this technology of our time. This book is about comparing the qualities of FPGA – their speed performance, area and power consumption, against custom-fabricated ICs, and exploring ways of mitigating their de ciencies. This work began as a question that many have asked, and few had the resources to answer – how much worse is an FPGA compared to a custom-designed chip? As we dealt with that question, we found that it was far more dif cult to answer than we anticipated, but that the results were rich basic insights on fundamental understandings of FPGA architecture. It also encouraged us to nd ways to leverage those insights to seek ways to make FPGA technology better, which is what the second half of the book is about. While the question “How much worse is an FPGA than an ASIC?” has been a constant sub-theme of all research on FPGAs, it was posed most directly, some time around May 2004, by Professor Abbas El Gamal from Stanford University to us – he was working on a 3D FPGA, and was wondering if any real measurements had been made in this kind of comparison. Shortly thereafter we took it up and tried to answer in a serious way.