Solutions

"Soaring technology costs are leading to a shakeout in the tumultuous ASIC business. ASICs and value-added semiconductor designs could suffer as a result of disturbing product development trends such as soaring design, verification and mask costs, coupled with the economic realities in the market." (EE Times, India, May 2007)

Market demand is changing.  The telecommunications market is moving faster than ever.  As a result, the equipment vendors must deliver product to the market faster, at a lower cost.  There are obvious implications in terms of embedded silicon.

In addition, there is a proliferation in service requirements by operators - fragmenting the market: in the past standards based networks dictated silicon requirements.  Now, there are numerous competing technologies competing for market share: MPLS, IP, PBT, Ethernet...

A massive shakeout in the ASIC (application specific integrated circuit) supply market is occurring as a result. ASICs require vast up-front investment and verification costs. ASICs are highly inflexible – once code is committed there is no return.  The result is that rigid ASIC based solutions are becoming significantly less viable in the new fast moving market environment.  ASIC vendors also tend to be slow to respond to market need given the nature of their product development lifecycles.

Market shifts mean that the industry needs to look for other means of delivering silicon that is fit-for-purpose but overcomes the cost, responsiveness and flexibility barriers represented by ASICs.

Omiino has responded to these market changes by pioneering the process of building solutions on the latest generation of commodity FPGAs.