What is custom design?

[Kuan Zhou]

Hi,
Does full custom design mean you design everything by yourself, like
ASIC? FPGA is only semi-customed design?

This question may sound stupid. Please correct me if I am wrong.

sincerely
-------------
Kuan Zhou
ECSE department

 

[ka]

On Tue, 27 Apr 2004 21:59:32 -0400, Kuan Zhou <zhouk@rpi.edu> wrote:

Hi,
Does full custom design mean you design everything by yourself, like
ASIC? FPGA is only semi-customed design?

Full-custom generally means that a significant portion of the
transistors in the chip are individually specified. Non full-custom
ASIC designs are usually done using standard cell libraries where all
the cells are already designed and characterized. Both full-custom and
standard cell designs are ASIC methodologies. FGPAs are not in the
ASIC category as they can be adapted to almost any design
requirements; it can also be argued that FPGAs are standard products
as opposed to ASICs or even ASSPs.