Quote from: eldentyrell_old on September 17, 2011, 01:52:40 AM

Quote from: ttul on June 04, 2011, 02:05:43 PM

Quote from: Transisto on May 31, 2011, 12:29:02 AM

At what price does an ASIC batch start at ?

(rough estimate please)

You can get a design into a shared wafer for as little as $25,000. In some countries there are academic fabs that make chips for student projects, etc.. and these can be had for much less, but you need the hookups. You also pay a lot less for older processes.

FWIW I haven't been able to get a quote under $70,000 out of MOSIS, which handles the majority of academic chip fabbing.

Usually "the hookups" equals "fab has been hiring our lab's graduate students for a decade now and wants to keep the supply steady". In which case there's actually more remuneration going on above and beyond dollars changing hands.

We've obviously looked at this a great deal at LargeCoin. The cost of fabbing a profitable Bitcoin ASIC is $500,000. This is the cost when you use a structure ASIC solution, and there isn't any way to get it below $500,000 - believe me, we have tried.

Structured ASIC processes definitely remove a lot of the complexity of ASIC fabrication versus standard cell or full custom processes. However, you are still dealing with the fabrication of an immensely complex integrated circuit with millions of tiny little wires in it. Getting the design right so that the first batch works means spending lots of money on sophisticated software and engineering talent - and that's just not cheap.

If you want to run off a few chips in an academic process, by all means go for it. That's a great hobby level activity. However, we found through our extensive analysis that nothing short of a structured ASIC process can give you the scale and volume that you need to generate enough money from your efforts to be well compensated for the investment.