Cost benefit tradeoffs for ASIC versus programmable logic device

Two approaches to the implementation of logic-gate arrays and programmable logic are compared. It is shown that there is a large advantage of using gate arrays instead of programmable logic device field-programmable gate arrays (PLD/FPGAs). The performance of the circuits is dramatically improved in terms of speed, power consumption, reduction in parts cost, and reliability of the circuits. Gate array (GA) technology has all of the advantages over PLD/FPGA that is has over transistor-transistor logic (TTL) circuitry. Some programmable devices have a somewhat higher level of integration than most TTL parts. Breadboarding with programmable devices and converting to GA has the disadvantage of being more costly and time consuming than designing directly with GA.>