Some mild stir in Programmable ASICs

EE Times reports: “End markets are presenting a serious problem to traditional ASIC design. Especially in consumer applications, but increasingly in other areas as well, markets tend to be fast-moving and fragmented. The system-on-chip that is perfect for midrange portable media players in China now is wrong today in the rest of the world and will be wrong tomorrow in China. SoC developers talk about product lives in months and hundreds of thousands of units, not years and millions.”

This is the problem statement, but the solution has so far been elusive. Hundreds of Millions have been invested already.

The author, Ron Wilson, however, cites a number of proof-points from the collaboration of eASIC and ST, as well as Lightspeed. This is encouraging. “We have so far created six derivative products from this design,” said Michele Borgatti, front-end technology and manufacturing manager on the overall project at STMicroelectronics. “In one instance, we were able to move from completed RTL to tapeout of the necessary via mask in 24 hours.”

Big implications for platform-based designs and building derivatives of a product family.

Also to watch, some stealth companies in the space: Ambric, this morning, announced a new CEO hire (Howard Bubb) out of Intel. Founded in 2003, the Beaverton, Ore.-based start-up closed $10.4 million in Series A funding in September 2004. Investors include ComVentures, OVP Venture Partners, Northwest Technology Ventures and individuals. Tabula has also been awfully quiet!