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Making the mask is really expensive. I had an external lecturer tell me it cost about 1 million usd to make a set of masks for their silicon, I assume Intel pay
by hmottestad 14y ago
Making the mask is really expensive. I had an external lecturer tell me it cost about 1 million usd to make a set of masks for their silicon, I assume Intel pays way more.
Once you have the mask though, pushing out chips is cheap and easy.
- Tuna-Fish 14y agoAnd the masks are just a really, really small part of the total cost. Intel has to pay for their fabs, they have to pay for the research into ever smaller line widths, they have to pay for materials research for new gate materials, and they have to pay for the massive research and development to design new, better chips.