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> they're in every 5G base station

Just a tiny nitpick to your great answer but Nokia's 5G base station stuff (Reefshark) is built around ASICs. I would expect others do the same. There's some reasoning at https://www.electronicdesign.com/technologies/embedded/artic...

https://www.nokia.com/about-us/news/releases/2020/06/15/noki...

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The ReefShark ASIC sits alongside an FPGA which acts akin to an IPU. I know only because I played my own small part in the design. It was originally meant to be entirely FPGA-based, but they got hit with some severe supply constraints by Intel and Xilinx, which is why cost keeps getting discussed. Prices have dropped back down to stable numbers again since mid-last year, but at the time ASICs ended up being more affordable at the volume they're doing (demand spiked mid-project due to the removal of Huawei networking equipment).

We (outside Wireless) heard the Intel silicon didn't perform/yield and the original designs became infeasible, prompting a sudden mad scramble. I didn't realise it was originally planned to be FPGA-based. Interesting, thanks.

Very glad to hear things have improved.

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