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Just googling really quick: the Lattice Semiconductor LFE5U-12 is a 12k-LUT FPGA (and a LUT is way more flexible than a gate).

So realistically, if you need fully custom digital logic, you'd buy LFE5U-12 instead and program that.

So that's $16 FPGA from widely available distributors (like Digikey) who likely can afford 1 or 2 day shipping.

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Custom chip design for a flex-circuit is interesting, but only if you have substantial analog parts that cannot be easily implemented by an FPGA.




The power profile of an FPGA is very different (worse) than dedicated silicon. Both the background current and cost of a gate switch. There are a lot of situations where that isn't acceptable.


I suspect the power profile of an FPGA is better than this flex-silicon...


True, that's definitely possible. I was giving the habitual answer (that I occasionally need to explain to a client at work) why you need to spend $2m having an ASIC made when "it's just digital logic and we got the prototype going in a month"

They usually care about at least one of - size, power, cost.




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