Fab minimum order requirement

Suppose you ask them.

Wave a few million dollars in front to their nose to get their attention...

If you have to ask such things, you probably can't afford it. That's what FPGA's are for, you can buy just one of those if you want.

Dave.

If you have to ask, FPGAs are likely too rich too. The FX100s I'm using are just shy of $3K each, from what I understand. Recent processors aren't small either.

Barely. A set of masks alone is worth a $million or more.

Still massively cheaper than an ASIC for small volume. And you can fit an ARM9 (or several maybe) into a smaller and cheaper FPGA than an FX100.

Dave.

But not cheaper than a couple of ASSPs.

He issue wasn't the CPU, rather the video processor. The FX100 has a PPC401x hard core.

The OP did not specify any details at all on his "video processors", so it's impossible to say anything about the FPGA requirements. But as an example, a 32bit processor soft core doing say composite video processing is easily do-able in a much lower end and cheaper FPGA, like say a sub $100 Spartan XC3S1500.

Dave.

Even $100 is a pretty pricey "video processor".

Depends on the target market, and not in low volume. You can just buy one or a dozen FPGAs if you want to. Price comes down with volume.

The OP is kidding himself by talking "minimum order QTY" and ASIC in the same sentence.

Dave.

If you're building that few widgets, you'd better add in my time too and I don't work cheap (makes the $3K we're spending on the FPGAs look cheap).

Unless he gets on one of the shared lot programs. Still the NRE is going to kill him. ASSPs are still the way to go for anyone without insanely deep pockets.

Plus mask designs/integrations costs/problems. It gets impractical beyond quarter wafers. It's just a way for the fab house to bring you in.