xw3098

Price is relative. That could be Los Altos, California. Which is very nice, walkable with garages, great parks and outdoors, but not what most people would call affordable. :)

We don’t know what node they’re targeting so this is all speculation but if it’s anything below say 22nm then that’s finFET, and there’s nothing low cost about finFET at prototype volumes.

If it’s not finFET then a non production mask set is much less than $50 million in 2023.

Also, keep in mind maskless lithography has been used commercially for roughly ten years now. And it’s been in Universities for significantly longer.

Process development is closer to chemical engineering and that’s not bad when compared with their salary.

There’s no way it’s lower cost. However what it could be is guaranteed line capacity and delivery dates. And if you’re doing small orders from a large foundry you don’t get that. Those things have value too and someone might be willing to pay a bit extra to get them.

My main issue is semiconductor lines are fragile beasts that need constant tinkering. So if the system requires full time staff to keep running, that’s going to be really expensive.

"by charging around 2'000 USD per prototype and letting an engineer wait for months"

Is the $2000/prototype really the thing that's keeping the market closed. If we assume it takes one engineer one year to spec/design/test one IC, compared to $2K, it's still going to be that engineer's salary that dominates the cost of the project. Even at non US rates.

The thing that's keeping IC design closed is IC design is really hard and tool chain installs are very specific to a particular design. Even if I gave you my design files. It's unlikely you could turn that into an ASIC as is. I'm not saying the tools have to work this way, I'm just saying that today, they do. Even if you're doing a digital design of an ASIC. The verilog is just one piece of what you need.

Assume this was true. Now, for the sake of argument, say someone makes a mask with an error. How would you identify where in the manufacturing system the fault lies?