Online tool to choose between FPGA and ASIC embedded designs

By Nick Flaherty www.flaherty.co.uk

HardwareBee has launched a free calculator to find out whether an FPGA or ASIC will be more cost effective in a design, highlighting all the design considerations.

It asks engineers to fill in the ASIC costs:

• Development NRE – cost of the ASIC development efforts (engineers and EDA tools)
• Maskset NRE – cost of maskset and MPW required for wafer production
• IP NRE – total cost of all IPs needed for the ASIC (for example: PLL, A/D, SERDES, etc)
• Package NRE – cost of package design and tooling
• Test NRE – the cost of the test solution (wafer sort, final test).
• Unit Cost – cost of the ASIC unit in production
• Lifetime Volume – the number of ASICs you plan to produce over the entire project lifetime

And the FPGA costs:

• Development NRE – cost of the FPGA development efforts (engineers)
• IP NRE – total cost of all IPs needed for the FPGA (for example: HDLC, Video Compression etc)
• Unit Cost – cost of the FPGA unit in production
• Lifetime Volume – the number of FPGAs you plan to produce over the entire project lifetime

The calculator is at hardwarebee.com/fpga-vs-asic-calculator/