Gate Array (cont)
Fabrication costs are cheaper than standard cell or full custom because the gate array wafers are mass produced; the non recurring engineering csts are lower because only a few (1-3) unique routing masks have to be created for each design.
Fabrication time can be extremely short (1-2 weeks) because the wafers are already created and are only missing the routing layers. The more routing layers, the higher the cost, the longer the fabrication time, but the better usage of the available transistors on the gate array.
Almost all high volume production of complex digital designs are done in either Standard Cell or Gate Array
- Gate arrays used to be more popular, but recently Standard cells has shown a resurgence in use.