In this guest column, RTC Magazine editor-in-chief Tom Williams notes that the Application Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) has now been replaced by programmable logic devices such as the Field Programmable Logic Array (FPGA), why this has occurred, and what are some of the consequences of this trend to embedded system development. Williams writes . . .

“Roll the muffled drums. Haul out the black crepe. Close the coffin on the full custom ASIC and send it to its reward. Never mind that the corpse still appears to be twitching. The ASIC is dead. Gone the way of the dinosaur. Well, maybe not exactly the dinosaur-more like the coelacanth. It will live on in small numbers in the murky depths and occasionally be dragged up for the edification of the curious.”

“Like most species, the ASIC is not going extinct because of internal flaws, but because it cannot survive in a changing environment-an environment increasingly dominated by programmable logic . . .”

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