While not as flexible as FPGAs, ASICs are typically lower in cost at volumes, lower in power consumption, smaller in board space and can include analog circuits such as PHYs as required with Ethernet. One of the companies specializing in this approach is Hilscher, with six chips and 20 matching network stacks that are capable of providing SoC function ranging from PLC and MMIs on a chip to encoders, drives and valve blocks. With integrated ARM CPU cores, various programs such as CodeSYS, QVis or any C application can be integrated in standard ARM Cores.
>> Read Automation World's complete embedded coverage: How Embedded Systems are Changing Automation
