How Much Will That Chip Cost?
Ed Sperling, SemiEngineering
March 27th, 2014
From the leading edge of design to older process nodes, development costs are being contained much better than the initial reports would indicate. But not always for the obvious reasons.
From the most advanced process nodes to the trailing edge of design there is talk about the skyrocketing cost of developing increasingly complex SoCs. At 16/14nm it’s a combination of multi-patterning, multiple power domains and factoring in physical and proximity effects. At older nodes, it’s the shift to more sophisticated versions of the processes and new tools to work within those processes.
Despite an industry-wide sense of despair, though, progress is being made on all fronts—either with tools or methodologies or platform approaches that rely heavily on reuse. While projections show it will cost as much as $300 million to develop new SoCs at the leading edge (see chart below), the real numbers are generally much lower—generally between $20 million and $50 million, providing there is plenty of reusable IP. And at older nodes, improvements in processes can allow chipmakers to stay exactly where they are and still eke one or two generations of devices out of the same node. It’s not all good news — it’s still expensive, difficult and often frustrating — but neither is it all bad news.
Related News
- How much did Apple pay to settle with Imagination?
- Intel Holds Qualcomm at Bay to Lead 2012 Embedded Processor Vendor Share Ranking, But for How Much Longer?
- How Will 5G Advanced Change RF Design?
- How to multiply by 18 battery autonomy of voice control devices?
- Countdown: How Close is China to 40% Chip Self-Sufficiency?
Breaking News
- intoPIX Powers Ikegami's New IPX-100 with JPEG XS for Seamless & Low-Latency IP Production
- Tower Semiconductor and Alcyon Photonics Announce Collaboration to Accelerate Integrated Photonics Innovation
- Qualcomm initiates global anti-trust complaint about Arm
- EnSilica Agrees $18m 7 Year Design and Supply ASIC Contract
- SiliconIntervention Announces Availability of Silicon Based Fractal-D Audio Amplifier Evaluation Board
Most Popular
- Qualcomm initiates global anti-trust complaint about Arm
- Siemens acquires Altair to create most complete AI-powered portfolio of industrial software
- Alphawave Semi Reveals Suite of Optoelectronics Silicon Products addressing Hyperscaler Datacenter and AI Interconnect Market
- EnSilica Agrees $18m 7 Year Design and Supply ASIC Contract
- Rapidus Announces Strategic Partnership with Quest Global to Enable Advanced 2nm Solutions for the AI Chip Era
![]() |
E-mail This Article | ![]() |
![]() |
Printer-Friendly Page |