Many first-time ASIC conversations fail before they begin.
Not because the idea is wrong, but because expectations are misaligned. Teams approach vendors too early with vague goals, or too late after internal assumptions have already hardened into unrealistic plans.
The result is frustration on both sides: slow quotes,
The question most teams ask is simple:
“At what volume does ASIC become cheaper than FPGA?”
The problem is that the question is usually asked too late, and answered too simplistically. There is no single magic number where ASIC suddenly becomes the obvious choice. The real break-even point
Most ASIC schedules fail quietly.
Not because of one catastrophic mistake, but because they were planned as if silicon behaved like software: linear progress, easy reversals, and unlimited iteration. In reality, ASIC development is constrained by physics, manufacturing, and verification effort. Late changes are expensive, and uncertainty compounds quickly.
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For many teams, the term “ASIC NRE” is enough to stop the conversation.
It sounds like a single, large, opaque number that appears late in the process and instantly kills the business case. In reality, NRE is not one thing, and it is rarely as arbitrary as it feels.
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Most teams don’t decide to move from FPGA to ASIC.
They get pushed there.
At the beginning of a product’s life, FPGA feels like freedom: fast iteration, low upfront cost, and a clear path to demos and early customers. But once a product starts shipping, the rules change.
As PCIe 5.0 and 6.0 dominate headlines in the semiconductor industry, it’s tempting for every SoC design team to reach for the newest protocol available. But not every application needs blazing-fast 32GT/s throughput—and not every market segment can afford the power, complexity, and cost penalties that come with bleeding-edge PHYs.
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