That's sort of right, basically it's the first real production runs, when you think everything is ready & will work, but you haven't actually made a real produc

That's sort of right, basically it's the first real production runs, when you think everything is ready & will work, but you haven't actually made a real product yet. At the start of risk production, by definition there have been no customer designs put through the fab. Actually this is not quite true, Sun explained. Before the start of risk production the company has already run a number of shuttles with test chips from customers, so foundry and clients are already starting to wring out the more critical structures in the first customer designs. But these test shuttles are not full chips either. -- https://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/practical-chip-design/4309335/TSMC-risk-production-what-does-it-mean-for-28nm- https://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/practical-chip-design/... So, it's a point in the process where the foundry is taking a chance, and the customer is also taking a chance. I've also heard it applied to a customer design, e.g. the customer starts to volume ramp production before they finish fully testing the design.