What is a 'asic fpga hardware design engineer'?

[DJediMaster]

I need to find out the job description of an 'asic fpga hardware design engineer'. Can somebody help me out with this...it's for a school project? Thanks.

 

[Passions]

Linked

 

[DJediMaster]

crap. i've tried pretty much all of the search engines but i couldnt come up with anything really solid. they give brief outlines of what the job 'involves' but nothing on what that type of person physically does for the job. i would appreciate it if anyone could help me out. thx!

 

[Passions]

Does this help?

Text

Text

An asic fpga engineer isn't one thing, they can be seperate.

 

[Igor]

It's easy. ASIC is application specific IC, ie a custom chip made for a particular design. FPGA is a Field Programmable Gate array,
essentially a matrix of gates that can be reprogrammed to create whatever functionality is needed. And the guy/gal who deeals with that is the engineer. They often use VHDL, Verilog and other hardware description languages to describe the chips. That stuff gets compiled and syntesized into the actual IC.

 

[DJediMaster]

what would some real world applications be for the ASIC?

 

[StandardCell]

<< what would some real world applications be for the ASIC? >>



Both ASICs and FPGAs can be used for any of the following (and a lot more): digital camera chips, network router, engine/brake control system, hard drive controller/interface, televisions, PDAs, printers, custom 3D graphics generation, name just about anything electronic and they're in there.

Also, the phrase ASIC/FPGA hardware engineer can be a little deceiving. Igor's definition is the best, but that doesn't mean that companies use that right. Sometimes they describe people who do strictly the chip, and sometimes the chip and the rest of the circuitry and board that the chip goes on.

 

[Igor]

ASICs are mostly used when you need to squeze a lot of stuff in small area, since you can combine all the logic etc in the code.. They usual thing after that is to make the chips somewhere in Taiwan or China so they cost pennies and slap that chip on a board instead of a bunch of standard ones doing the same thing. They are also used in military equipment where cost is the least of the worries but reliability and level of integration is important