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We need custom hardware for this product. How would you decide between an ASIC and an FPGA?
Compare a large one-off engineering cost against a much lower cost per unit, and set the break-even volume from those two numbers. Then weight it with what a mistake costs: an FPGA is reprogrammable and ships sooner, an ASIC is smaller, faster and cheaper per part but a functional bug means a respin measured in months.
6 min readUpdated 2026-08-15
Answer
Short answer
Choose between an ASIC and an FPGA by comparing break-even volume, schedule risk, power, area, and how costly a late bug would be. FPGAs are faster to ship and reprogrammable, while ASICs win at stable high volume when lower unit cost, power, and size justify the upfront NRE and verification burden.
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Likely follow-ups
- Which parts of your RTL would have to change when moving a working FPGA design towards an ASIC?
- How would you keep an ASIC schedule from being held hostage by one late specification change?
- What would make you choose an FPGA even at a volume where the ASIC is clearly cheaper per unit?
- How does the risk of a part going out of production differ between the two routes, and who carries it?
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