ASIC (application-specific integrated circuit)

An integrated circuit tailored for a particular piece of electronic equipment. (Cingular)

An ASIC (Application-Specific Integrated Circuit) is an integrated circuit (IC) customised for a particular use, rather than intended for general-purpose use. For example, a chip designed solely to run a cell phone is an ASIC. In contrast, the 7400 series and 4000 series integrated circuits are logic building blocks that can be wired together to perform many different applications. Intermediate between ASICs and standard products are application specific standard products (ASSPs).

As feature sizes have shrunk and design tools improved over the years, the maximum complexity (and hence functionality) possible in an ASIC has grown from 5,000 gates to over 100 million. Modern ASICs often include entire 32-bit processors, memory blocks including ROM, RAM, EEPROM, Flash and other large building blocks. Such an ASIC is often termed a SoC (System-on-a-chip). Designers of digital ASICs use a hardware description language (HDL), such as Verilog or VHDL, to describe the functionality of ASICs.

Field-programmable gate arrays (FPGA) are the modern day equivalent of 7400 series logic and a breadboard, containing programmable logic blocks and programmable interconnects that allow the same FPGA to be used in many different applications. For smaller designs and/or lower production volumes, FPGA's may be more cost effective than an ASIC design. The Non-recurring engineering cost (the cost to setup the factory to produce a particular ASIC) can run into hundreds of thousands of dollars.

(Wikipedia)