LSI Logic, a firm which built its business on custom design chips manufactured in its own fabs, threw a substantial rock into the Asic pond when it recently announced the ending of further development of its structured Asic product known as Rapidchip.

LSI was one of the more ambitious promoters of the structured Asic concept which was intended to breathe new life in the custom chip market, making Asics more affordable.

Its decision to pull out has left those companies which still believe in the structured Asic concept with a problem: to convince system-on-chip designers that Asics will continue to be attractive options in the face of alternatives such as FPGAs and reconfigurable processors.

No one will admit that this is the beginning of the end of structured Asic as a product, but there are signs that the Asic market is quickly reassessing the real benefits of pre-configured and lower-cost Asics in a design world dominated by flexible programmable devices.

The big selling point with a structured Asic is its low up-front design cost, usually referred to as NRE. This was thought to make custom chip design – with its very low device cost in full production - more affordable for a wider range of users. But some people now believe the low NRE may not be so important.

The exit of Rapidchip does not mean the structured Asic was an experiment in low-cost custom design which failed.

It is inevitable that the concept of the affordable Asic is bound to have its supporters and the market will certainly grow. Only now expectations are more modest and perhaps more realistic.

It is perhaps significant that the biggest player in the structured Asic market is FPGA firm Altera. For an FPGA firm, structured Asics are all about expanding the business into the Asic market and not reinventing the concept of custom design.