diff between ASIC and SoC ?

[Mechatronics]

difference between asic and soc

what is the difference between ASIC Design and SoC Design ?

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[eltonjohn]

ASIC is "CUSTOM" SoC is General Purpose Configfurable

 

[sawaak]

Hi,
u can call a SoC as a "general purpose ASIC" , SoC relies heaviely on IP reuse, that is, we mostly "INTEGRATE" the predesigned IP cores in SoC, which is not the case with ASIC.

As far as i understand, there is a difference in front-end but the back-end is mostly the same.

 

[cedance]

ASIC, the name itself means Application specific IC's which means that if u are to assemble a device, then u cannot go for manufacturing first at the chip level and then go for the device, so u go for the specific devices after getting information as to the availability of that in the market or else make an order for that,,,

SOC, is a package.. at the least sense, like that of IC's i cannot understand why is that troubling u with ASIC's as far as i have understood...

regards,
Arun.

 

[andromeda]

SoC is reletivelly new term used for ASICs where lot oh hard or soft IPs are used in design process (actually where majority of design already exist in form of various IPs).
Design and verification process is different for SoC then for common ASICs. Verification is mainly about verification of IP integration (not about IP internal functions) and system-level testing. Also, because usually we have one or more processor IPs, SW-HW coverification is important part of verification process. From design point of view, usually SoC are organized around same standard on-chip bus (like OCP, AMBA, etc.) to simplify IP integration and verification process.

 

[roli]

Yes - 'andromeda's description above is the best and closest to what SoC definition is.

 

[Big Boy]

Simply put, ASIC stand for Application Specific IC, which is a custom-designed chip. When you have, for example, a design on FPGA or a complete design, and you want to create a specific chip that include the design, you send to an ASIC manufacturer and they build you an ASIC. Examples are controlers, memory, ...

SoC stand for System on a Chip. You remember in the old days, where you had a PC motherboard, with dozens of chips (one for timers, one for parallel port, one for memory management, one for ROM, ...). Well, today, there are newer chips that incorporate many of those functions on a single chip (like the north-bridge and south-briges adapters).

If you think of an even denser design, where you could have an application that have processor, memory (optionally), controlers and peripherials on a single chip, that is a SoC. This could be used in applications that need tight space, or fewer components. Remember that on the long run, less components equal less $$$.

SoC can be a package like an IP core too, that is used on FPGA.

At least, that is my understanding of it!

 

[geconom]

In a recent conference I heard the following explanation. SoC (System on Chip) and NoC (Network on Chip) describe the design's complexity. They are the successors of VLSI since we are no more interested on the number of discreate transistors we can integrate in a chip (this is no problem any more) but on the number and quality of the functionality we can integrate in a single device.

ASIC is a manufacturing option, as stated above.

 

[radix]

Here's a link to a decent article that explains the differences in some detail:

**broken link removed**

 

[FLEXcertifydll]

asic is custom IC device. It consist hardware-IP and for special application.
SOC is software IPcore or formware IPcore and planty of ram, I/O, arithmetic block, and analog block which could be programmed for general purpose.

 

[visualart]

It is two type of design idea.
ASIC: function implent, in general, base on the standard library.

SoC: function intergrate, BASE ON IP reusE.

 

[yingzhouke]

soc is built by ip core

 

[beta0]

ASIC is hardware chip,
SOC is hardware chip + software in the hardware chip.

 

[lostxu]

Asic is special for purpose,
Soc is a concept needed by vendor to cheat customer

 

[eapenabrm]

[align=justify:4ecfa7a31f]ASIC as mentioned earlier, stands for Application specific Integrated Circuits. These are further divided into Full Custom ASICs and Semi-Custom ASICs. ASICs are designed for a specific purpose only and cannot be used for any other purposes.

Full Custom ASICs are similar to the chips made my chip manufacturers such as Intel, etc.

Semi Custom ASICs are programming existing chips such as FPGAs and CPLDs. In these, the chips are already manufactured using programmable glue logic. These are then programmed using specialized tools.

SoCs stand for System on a Chip. These are also a type of ASICs. The difference is that these SoCs contain the programmable/reusable part with other parts such as memory, I/O interfaces and other IP cores. All these are targetted to perform functions that were usually performed by a system (consisting of processor, RAM, etc). Thus the term System on a Chip. This is similar to shrinking a complete system that would be designed on a board into a single chip.[/align:4ecfa7a31f]

 

[radix]

I see a lot of people who refer to FPGAs as ASICs when they really shouldn't. If you design a chip and that chip requires you to generate a new lithography mask and you have to create new wafers, you're building an ASIC. In the past a full custom ASIC meant designing a chip with a standard cell library and creating a new mask for each of the layers in the manufacturing process.

Today there are devices known as structured ASICs. These devices are wafers that contain a "sea of gates" but don't yet have metal layers. Once you specify your design, the metal layers are fabbed to give you your desired functionality. Fab time is less than full custom asic and you get better perfomance than an FPGA though still not as good as full custom asic.

If you create a design that generates a bit or image file that you feed to a chip that programms it's functionality, your building a prommable device, not an asic. Even devices like the Actel devices that use fusible links and are "write once" are still programmable devices, not ASICs, if all you're. doing is burning the device. The folks at Actel built the actually ASIC, not you. You just programmed it.

 

[crazytnt]

Asic is special for purpose,
Soc is a concept needed by vendor to cheat customer
I agree with it