[alted]

Ignoring flexibility and cost/performance, this may be a sign that rapid chip fab turnaround times are possible. These were made by Pragmatic Semiconductor [1], who claim they can make chips within 48 hours and deliver within 4 weeks (likely due to their use of unconventional materials). Traditional silicon fabs, including trailing-edge foundries and TSMC, take 2-9 months. I do wish they'd emphasized this instead of flexibility.

[1] https://www.pragmaticsemi.com/

[IshKebab]

Yeah but traditional silicon fabs aren't making 12k gate chips.

[Teever]

What's the turn around time on 12k gate chips from a traditional fab?

[dragontamer]

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.

-------------

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.

[rkangel]

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.

[londons_explore]

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

[rkangel]

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.