Without a doubt semiconductor technology has driven the biggest changes in modern electronic system design. The relentless march of new semiconductor process technology continues unabated. As a result, year after year, semiconductor components have got bigger, faster, more complex and the cost per gate has continued to fall. On the flip side, the cost of designing and tooling for a component has risen to the point where typically only high volume applications can justify a complete custom design. This has elevated the role of the FPGA and more recently the structured ASIC (a device with a much lower barrier to entry than an ASIC.)

One of the huge advantages of using pre-designed silicon, such as FPGAs or structured ASICs, is that you get access to a leading edge process technology where the cost of development is amortized over millions of parts. For FPGAs, the tooling charge is eliminated and the only development costs are engineering and the relatively inexpensive tools that go along with it. Structured ASICs provide the next lowest barrier to entry as their tool costs are considerably lower than those of a full custom ASIC. Altera's Hardcopy solution allows for seemless transition from using FPGAs for prototyping and low volume production to using a structured ASIC when the volume supports doing so.

Comparing FPGA, structured ASIC and FPGA we get the following features and benefits of each technology: