Recent progress in front end ASICs for high-energy physics

Developments of Application Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs) for applications in the CMS experiment are briefly described, along with the motivations for the choice of technology, focussing especially on silicon strip readout of the CMS tracker. The major change in the last few years has been the widespread adoption in CMS of a commercial deep sub-micron CMOS technology in preference to specific radiation-hardened processes which seemed to be the only solution meeting the LHC requirements only a few years ago. The reasons for this are described and the performance of representative chips and the technology presented. The implications for future developments are outlined.