These days, Intel is an unusual model in that they own the whole 'stack', from processor design to fabrication, packaging, etc. To replicate that costs 10s of b

These days, Intel is an unusual model in that they own the whole 'stack', from processor design to fabrication, packaging, etc. To replicate that costs 10s of billions of dollars. To get your own chip produced using a 'pure-play' fab (which, these days, basically means TSMC, and to a lesser extent Samsung and GloFo), however, is much cheaper. If you want a 20nm chip, you design your chip (basically the cost is just engineering effort + CAD tools..a few million $$), send it to TSMC (getting masks made is another few million $$), and they send you back chips. Reality is slightly more complicated, in that you're using using an integrator to manage the relationship with TSMC, the packaging company, the testing company, etc., but a startup with $10-20 million could probably scrape together a decent 20nm chip. Once TSMC has built a new fab though, the longer it is 'relevant' the cheaper they can make the wafers, as they have more wafers to amortize the ~$10 billion or whatever it cost to build the fab over.