From ASIC to FPGA these days

Dec 17, 2003 5 Replies
A

Googling web & usenet didn't provide answer or pointers - so here it goes:



We have a fully tested design on fat Xilinx FPGA. Must go to ASIC,



0.18 or better. Relatively simple design, 3 clock domains, 300K gates. The only interface is USB, so very low pin count. If the foundry doesn't have USB phy in standard lib, we'll interface external phy.

The question is - how long does it take - how many months ? We will farm that out, but I need some realistic idea about time between giving cash and working FPGA code to this outsourcing entity until we get first chips in sample quantities.



I fully understand that each project is different, but feel uncomfortable with sales' quotes - I'd like to hear real experiences.



And, BTW, are fabs busy these days or are they in mood for deals ?


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J

Give your design house a month, and the fab 6-8 weeks.

Cheers, Jon

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A

Just changing the Subject: to what is should have been ...

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J

Check out Lightspeed and Flextronics. Lightspeed has a good story on their website clearly chasing after Xilinx architectures but I have no personal experience of either (yet). Apart from block rams, the IP is the big gotcha here. Lightspeed only customizes 2 layers of metal so it should be quick.

johnjaksonATusaDOTcom

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U

If you send me Your contact information in a mail, I can provide you with a contact to Atmels ULC offering. Assuming you have a good business case (enough volume), then Atmel can take your complete design + test vectors and design the ASIC. I belive that there will not be any need to go to an external design house for this. Atmel delivers many ASICs with built in USB phy so this will not be a problem. My guess is that it should take 4-6 months.

Best Regards Ulf at atmel dot com These comments are intended to be my own opinion and they may, or may not be shared by my employer, Atmel Sweden.
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V

One option for a low-risk ASIC conversion is to convert the design to Stratix, then use Altera's HardCopy conversion to an ASIC. It does mean you have to do an FPGA conversion, but that's easy to test immediately because you can try the FPGA right away. Then the ASIC conversion (HardCopy) is relatively easy, since you use the same synthesis & placement tools as you did for the FPGA, and all the tricky IP blocks like RAMs are the same in the HardCopy array as they are in the FPGA.

So it's a two-step conversion process, but it lowers your risk.

Vaughn Altera

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