Application specific standard product

An application specific standard product is a semiconductor device integrated product that is designed for a particular function and can be sold to more than one end user. It is a general purpose device that caters to a wide market. It is used in a wide range of fields including communications, automotive, consumer electronics, computers and industrial applications.

Application specific standard products control many basic functions of embedded systems. They can be found in encoding and decoding chips, USB interfaces, graphics accelerators, multimedia chips, data compression circuits, forward error correction devices, smart card chips, chip sets for cellular radio, serial-ATA and Ethernet interfaces wireless LAN chips and driver circuits for power semiconductor devices, to name just a few examples.

While application specific standard products are initially designed and optimised for a highly specific task by one manufacturer, others can incorporate them into their own products. This can significantly reduce the cost and effort of designing new technologies and allow companies to bring their products to market more quickly.

Current market trends mean that such generic semiconductor devices are in growing demand. The typical life spans of electronic devices are becoming shorter as technology manufacturers continue to rapidly innovate and launch new offerings within months. The accelerating pace of production is creating more demand for cheap off-the-shelf components.