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.
Crafting system solutions with platform ASICs can be as simple as 1, 2, 3, once you understand how ASICs, platform/structured ASICs, and FPGAs differ. Until recently, designing a complex ...