ASIC stands for
Application Specific Integrated Circuit. It is customized for specific purpose rather than general purpose. It can be a chip for cell phone, networking, communication or even for a children toy. An ASIC can be designed by either full custom approach or semi-custom approach. In full custom approach each transistor is hand crafted. So it take a lot of time and not suited for most consumer market. Because time to market will be very high. On other hand semi-custom uses pre designed stranded cell library. So time to market is less.
SOC is
System-on-Chip. SOC may contain multiple processor cores, different type memories like RAM, ROM, EEPROM, DSP processor , different kind of interfaces like USB, Ethernet, CAN, UART, pheripherals like Osillator, PLL, ADC,ADC, PWM on a single chip. So it is a complete system on a single chip. It is not necessary that a SOC contains all of these modules. It contains modules depending on requirement. Further a SOC can be designed using ASIC approach.
Application-specific integrated circuit - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
System-on-a-chip - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
ASIC design requires go through design process starting from specifications to fabrication. Masks are created by foundry using GDSII file. than chip is fabricated. Only the fabrication takes 2-3 months.
While in FPGA based design you need to write a verilog and synthesize it. Create a bit file(binary file) that programs the FPGA. This file decides FPGA interconnection depending on the logic. But performance is poor compared to ASIC.
Suggested readings:
Application Specific Integrated Circuits by Sebastian Smith
Modern VLSI design:system-on-chip design by Wayne Wolf
Also see my previous post on FPGA:
https://www.edaboard.com/threads/209794/
https://www.edaboard.com/threads/209147/