When is an ASIC the best device for my product?

That is a question we would be happy to address for you, but these days in all likelihood we would would not be the best choice for a total solution. The first hurdle to consider is the potential cost of getting your project off the ground and brought to market. Not just the NRE costs associated with ASIC manufacture, but sales losses due to turnaround times too.

Given the performance currently available from field programmable logic devices like an FPGA, the simplest “ASIC” device, the mask programmed Gate Array which was dominant in the 1980s and 1990s, no longer offers advantages. A full custom (i.e. all silicon layers) ASIC will only really be the best option in the extreme corners of the electronic design envelope. For example, components for very cost sensitive high volume products, or niche requirements in areas such as high frequency performance, precision tolerancing, or power consumption minimisation. So precise design specialists needed to optimise your expenditure. We have produced complete ASIC designs in the past, but resent efforts have been limited to the Verilog and VHDL design of application specific logic modules for inclusion in a much more complex device .