3 ms·

Do you know how much modern masksets cost? More than a MILLION DOLLARS for a set, and completely ridiculous sums for anything <28nm. So, if your market is <1M

Do you know how much modern masksets cost? More than a MILLION DOLLARS for a set, and completely ridiculous sums for anything <28nm. So, if your market is <1M dies a year, you have to price your chip >$1 just to break even. And in the car chip market, even 1M dies is a giant amount. Car market was all about decades old chips, made to stringent automotive specs, manufactured in tiny batches, and sold on long term contracts at sub-10 cent per packaged, tested, and binned die (and low bin chips were usually simply thrown away.)

nwiswell 5y ago
> So, if your market is <1M dies a year, you have to price your chip >$1 just to break even. And in the car chip market, even 1M dies is a giant amount. No, this is not the case. If you have a small run, the foundry will "consolidate" your chip with other customers to make a single mask. This makes sense all around, since the foundry would rather not have to deal with a mask set that has only a few wafer starts anyway.
- baybal2 5y ago
  You don't make commercial chips on a shuttle run. If you sit on the same mask as somebody else, you forsake all the flexibility, and you are limited to fabs with own mask shops — just taking your masks, and moving to another fab with them is near impossible. Asking the fab to make just any process tweaks is similarly impossible.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - nwiswell 5y ago
    I've never heard of a customer getting process tweaks for a one million die run, but then again I've got no experience with legacy fabs. Certainly the 14nm fab that Intel promised lately[1] for automotive demand would not entertain that sort of thing. [1] https://www.electronicdesign.com/markets/automotive/article/21174750/electronic-design-intel-to-commit-foundry-capacity-for-chipstarved-auto-industry https://www.electronicdesign.com/markets/automotive/article/...

nwiswell 5y ago

> So, if your market is <1M dies a year, you have to price your chip >$1 just to break even. And in the car chip market, even 1M dies is a giant amount. No, this is not the case. If you have a small run, the foundry will "consolidate" your chip with other customers to make a single mask. This makes sense all around, since the foundry would rather not have to deal with a mask set that has only a few wafer starts anyway.

baybal2 5y ago
You don't make commercial chips on a shuttle run. If you sit on the same mask as somebody else, you forsake all the flexibility, and you are limited to fabs with own mask shops — just taking your masks, and moving to another fab with them is near impossible. Asking the fab to make just any process tweaks is similarly impossible.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- nwiswell 5y ago
  I've never heard of a customer getting process tweaks for a one million die run, but then again I've got no experience with legacy fabs. Certainly the 14nm fab that Intel promised lately[1] for automotive demand would not entertain that sort of thing. [1] https://www.electronicdesign.com/markets/automotive/article/21174750/electronic-design-intel-to-commit-foundry-capacity-for-chipstarved-auto-industry https://www.electronicdesign.com/markets/automotive/article/...