In this White Paper, commissioned by ARM, author and leading industry commentator John Blyler (jblyler), takes a look at the current economics of custom System-on-Chip development relative to discrete IC boards, and analyses just where the tipping point in favour of custom designs lies.
"Custom System-on-Chip (SoC) semiconductors have now reached a cost point to compete directly with traditional discrete IC board products. Many original electronic manufacturing (OEM) companies of printed circuit boards are reconsidering a SoC implementation as a way to reduce the bill-of-material (BoM) costs, shrink the product size and power consumption, and add new features such as wireless connectivity and sensor processing. Further, moving to a custom SoC has several inherent advantages, such as design IP protection, supply chain end-of-life (EoL) security and mitigating the slowing of Moore’s law."
Dynamics around ASIC vs discrete board explained in a very simple language .