The FPGA to MPGA ASIC conversion process

The advent of advanced process technology coupled with shorter product life cycle continues to fuel the use of field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) for rapid product prototype in order to reduce the time-to-market of design. At the same time, the relative low cost and improved speed-performance offered by mask programmable gate array (MPGA) type of application specific integrated circuits (ASICs) dictate the migration of FPGA based digital designs to an MPGA based platform once product development is completed and high-volume production begins. In this paper, an overview of MPGA architecture and the FPGA-to-MPGA conversion process are examined. This paper will also discuss issues affecting conversion success rate.