On Wed, Oct 17, 2018 at 5:29 PM Paul Boddie paul@boddie.org.uk wrote:
On Wednesday 17. October 2018 16.30.17 Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton wrote:
it depends on what you take into account. if someone else pays the NREs to the foundry, i.e. a university agrees to collaborate and is offered access to a foundry for either free or at reduced rates, $250k-$500k comes off that amount, straight away.
Some interesting perspectives on this can be read about here:
https://chips4makers.io/blog/startup-costs-and-low-volume-manufacturing.html
yes, so, it actually costs, in the UK, about $600 per 180nm wafer. a full mask set however are still USD $250,000. so even 180nm is still mad.
However, pursuing such a campaign with a product that really needs to be done with "proper" silicon - needing higher frequencies and power/performance benefits, perhaps - might get more support, albeit from not quite the same audiences as the ones targeted in this campaign.
indeed, and that's great.
Paul
P.S. Still no progress from Crowd Supply on the latest update?
getting there