fic integrated circuit (ASIC), the field-programmable gate array (FPGA), and the digital signal processor (DSP). The evolution of these circuits is not mainly driven by telecommunications, since they find application in a much wider market, com- prising consumer appliances and almost all the industrial machinery. Technology for Telecommunications: Integrated Optics and Microelectronics Single CMOS cost ($) Lithography tool cost ($) 100 M 100 k Calendar year FIGURE 5.44 Trend of the CMOS cost and of the cost of the lithography tooling. (After Parthasarathy, S.E. and Thompson, S., Mater. Today, 9(8), 20, 2006.) It is a fact, however, that the continuous enhancement in the capabilities of such cir- cuits has conditioned strongly the design of telecommunication equipments. Electronic equalization would not be possible without suitable DSPs and FPGAs, while the evolution of router capacity has been strongly driven by the evolution of the ASIC performances. ASICs and FPGAs have been largely used to fasten the complex functionalities of next- generation SDH/SONET ADMs and of Carrier Class Ethernet switches, up to the level that the design of an interface card of a packet machine (would be a router or a switch) partially coincides with the design of ASICs or with a programming of FPGAs with suit- able characteristics. 5.7.2 Application-Specific Integrated Circuits ASICs are, as the name indicates, nonstandard integrated circuits that have been designed for a specific use or application. Generally an ASIC design will be undertaken for a prod- uct that will have a large production run, and the ASIC may contain a very large part of the electronics needed on a single integrated circuit. Despite the cost of an ASIC design, ASICs can be very cost-effective for many appli- cations. It is possible to tailor the ASIC design to meet the exact requirement for the product and using an ASIC can mean that much of the overall design can be contained in one integrated circuit and the number of additional components can be significantly 