Chip manufacturing has many steps. For a new leading edge process it may take 3-6 months to get silicon back after submitting the design to a silicon foundry fo

Chip manufacturing has many steps. For a new leading edge process it may take 3-6 months to get silicon back after submitting the design to a silicon foundry for manufacturing. For a small volume ‘shuttle’ run hopefully there won’t be delays, but this is not the same as having working chips! The foundry will do initial checks it is manufacturable at ‘tapeout’ when you submit your design, but you don’t know for sure if your chip works with intended functionality until you get it back! You are relying on lots and lots of simulations up front before your ‘tape-out’. Sometimes issues are found and a chip requires a re-spin - basically another go with the bugs fixed. You want to do this as few times as possible (ideally right first time) due to cost and time of these iterations.