Pronounced ay-sik, and short for Application-Specific Integrated Circuit, a chip designed for a particular application (as opposed to the integrated circuits that control functions such as RAMin a PC). ASICs are built by connecting existing circuit building blocks in new ways. Since the building blocks already exist in a library, it is much easier to produce a new ASIC than to design a new chip from scratch.
ASICs are commonly used in automotive computers to control the functions of the vehicle and in PDAs.
