Making connections

Only a couple of years ago, those designing products for high volume markets – such as consumer electronics – had an easy choice when it came to selecting a platform. If they wanted to minimise cost and component size, they took the asic route. And that approach worked on a number of levels. But as the ‘churn’ of consumer electronics products becomes more frequent, the economics of the asic solution are beginning to break down. Now, an asic may only make sense if the product will have large volumes over an extended timeframe. So a technology gap has opened up and a number of companies are looking to fill it. Solutions are coming from the structured asic and programmable logic camps, although their approaches are varied. In general, there are three main drivers, no matter what technology is chosen – power consumption, cost and connectivity. And it’s connectivity that is proving problematic; providing the right interfaces in the rapidly moving consumer market is critical. Trying to offer the best of both worlds, QuickLogic has recently unveiled ArcticLink, described as ‘an innovative programmable connectivity solution for embedded systems processors’.