By John Blyler
A just completed EDA tools and technology survey of 140 engineers conducted over the past several weeks shows a strong push into full-custom devices and FPGAs. In fact, 32% of the ICs being designed by engineers using EDA tools were building full custom devices, and another 24% were building FPGAs. Only 9% were working on ASICs, although the ASICs tend to be large and extremely complex chips.
About 14% were designing analog arrays and another 11% were using gate arrays. Another 10% were building ASSPs.