H/W Design Partition

A number of separate pieces of silicon are combined to form the product.

Reasons for H/W design partition:

• Modular Engineering At Large (Revision Control/Lifetime/Sourcing/Reuse),
• Size and Capacity (chips 6-11 mm in size),
• Technology mismatch (Si/GaAs/HV/Analog/Digital/RAM/DRAM/Flash)
• Supply chain: In-house versus Standard Part.
• Isolation of sensitive RF signals,
• Cost: a new chip spin of old IP is still very expensive.