ASIC (Application Specific Integrated Circuit) is a proprietary application program chip designed and manufactured for specific user requirements and electronic systems. Its computing power and efficiency can be customized according to algorithm needs. ASIC chips are widely used in intelligent terminals such as artificial intelligence devices, virtual currency mining equipment, consumable printing equipment, military and national defense equipment. It has the following advantages:
Area advantage: ASIC chips are designed to avoid redundant logic units, processing units, registers, storage units, and other architectures. They are constructed in a pure digital logic circuit form, which is conducive to reducing chip area.
Energy consumption advantage: ASIC chips have lower unit computing power compared to CPU, GPU, FPGAs, such as GPUs consuming an average of about 0.4 watts of power per unit computing power. ASIC chips consume an average of about 0.2 watts of power per unit computing power, which can meet the energy consumption limitations of smart appliances.
Integration advantage: Adopting customized design, ASIC chip system and circuit technology are highly integrated, which helps customers obtain high-performance integrated circuit price advantages.
But just like a coin has two sides, ASIC also has drawbacks. ASIC chips have a high degree of customization, and the design and development cycle is long. The finished product requires physical design and reliability verification, and the market time is relatively slow.
Also, ASIC chips have a high dependence on algorithms. Artificial intelligence algorithms update and iterate at a high speed, resulting in a higher frequency of ASIC chip updates.