From the paper: With standard transistor costs and utilization, this would cost about $2 per chip to manufacture, after fixed design and tape-out costs of roug

From the paper: With standard transistor costs and utilization, this would cost about $2 per chip to manufacture, after fixed design and tape-out costs of roughly $2M [32]. This suggests that an $8M investment would buy enough ASICs to complete the DH-1024 sieving precomputation in one year. $8 million is pocket change for the NSA, who's estimated yearly budget is around $10 billion.