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iniewski
Huawei was buying many telecom and datacom ASICs and ASSPs more than 10 years ...
dylan.mcgrath
Indeed. It was my mistake to post the blog last week. I hope that this sets the ...
Huawei drives battle between FPGAs and ASICs
Handel Jones
10/30/2012 12:30 PM EDT
Increasing appetite for ASICs
It is estimated that HiSilicon will implement 35 standard cell ASIC designs in 2012, compared to 24 in 2011, 16 in 2010, and nine in 2009. In addition to the increase in the number of standard cell ASICs, there is also an increase in complexity of the designs including support of high throughput Serdes.
Huawei is also a large user of FPGAs, with most of the business being split between Xilinx and Altera. The percentage split is determined by relative capabilities of the new generations of products, with many new designs in 28-nm. A key trend with FPGAs is the combination of FPGA plus ASSP, which can replace standard cell ASICS in many applications.
At 20-nm, it is expected that there will be increased use of FPGAs, with revenue split based on the product functionality of the leaders.
There is continuous displacement of the higher volume FPGAs by standard cell ASICs, but there is also a displacement of standard cell ASICs by FPGAs as the cost of designing standard cell ASICs increases rapidly with the migration to 28- and 20-nm. If there is access to the appropriate IP, which in many communications designs is high speed Serdes, 40-nm standard cell ASICs can displace FPGAs.
FPGAs, however, provide field programmability and support a wide range of IP which can be cost prohibitive for many standard cell vendors to support.
The expectation is that Huawei and other communication equipment vendors will continue to use standard cell ASICs and FPGAs, but as FPGAs include more application functionality, growth of FPGA consumption will be higher than growth of standard cell ASIC consumption.
Handel Jones is the founder and CEO of International Business Strategies Inc., a strategic consulting firm to the electronics industry.
Related stories:
It is estimated that HiSilicon will implement 35 standard cell ASIC designs in 2012, compared to 24 in 2011, 16 in 2010, and nine in 2009. In addition to the increase in the number of standard cell ASICs, there is also an increase in complexity of the designs including support of high throughput Serdes.
Huawei is also a large user of FPGAs, with most of the business being split between Xilinx and Altera. The percentage split is determined by relative capabilities of the new generations of products, with many new designs in 28-nm. A key trend with FPGAs is the combination of FPGA plus ASSP, which can replace standard cell ASICS in many applications.
At 20-nm, it is expected that there will be increased use of FPGAs, with revenue split based on the product functionality of the leaders.
There is continuous displacement of the higher volume FPGAs by standard cell ASICs, but there is also a displacement of standard cell ASICs by FPGAs as the cost of designing standard cell ASICs increases rapidly with the migration to 28- and 20-nm. If there is access to the appropriate IP, which in many communications designs is high speed Serdes, 40-nm standard cell ASICs can displace FPGAs.
FPGAs, however, provide field programmability and support a wide range of IP which can be cost prohibitive for many standard cell vendors to support.
The expectation is that Huawei and other communication equipment vendors will continue to use standard cell ASICs and FPGAs, but as FPGAs include more application functionality, growth of FPGA consumption will be higher than growth of standard cell ASIC consumption.
Handel Jones is the founder and CEO of International Business Strategies Inc., a strategic consulting firm to the electronics industry.
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- U.S. warns telcos not to buy from China
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junko.yoshida
10/30/2012 1:05 PM EDT
Actually, EE Times knew about Huawei's great focus on custom chips for a while.
We had a story on "Focus on Chip Engineering Rewrites Huawei's Story" at our EE Times Confidential site more than a year ago.
http://confidential.eetimes.com/company-analysis/4217592/Focus-on-Chip-Engineering-Rewarites-Huawei-s-Story
Rick Merrit interviewed Bill Lynch, a veteran microprocessor architect (ex Cisco), who is now working at Huawei in that story.
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dylan.mcgrath
10/30/2012 4:56 PM EDT
Indeed. It was my mistake to post the blog last week. I hope that this sets the record straight.
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iniewski
11/1/2012 1:16 PM EDT
Huawei was buying many telecom and datacom ASICs and ASSPs more than 10 years ago...influencing their spec in some cases
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