A process cost is basically the 2 years of Fab time. And a Fab is expensive due to the capital equipment (your opportunity cost). A 10B Fab Costa about 2B per y

A process cost is basically the 2 years of Fab time. And a Fab is expensive due to the capital equipment (your opportunity cost). A 10B Fab Costa about 2B per year, thus process development is 4B. I think those design costs are nonsensical. There are major projects done by groups of 100 or fewer engineers. A really unique design can cost that much, but a licensed design built.on standard cells is less. That is how rocketchip, RiscV, and others get by. As an approximation, every M$ is 2 engineer years. A 100M$ design is...200 engineer years. With an ARM license and other IP, that is likely manageable. There is a large infrastructure of design tools that keep design costs constrained per design. Fab costs are not so easily limited....