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.
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.
Do you have a source for that? It seems like a problematic measure to use absolute dollars spent as it had to be normalized per capita and to cost of living.
In just officers per capita the US more or less middle of the pack.
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?
You're not wrong but on the other hand, if the knife can't cut, that will hamper the chef.
Also Wu had this to say, “The iPhone 15 Pro is the best camera available for its size, and while it can’t replace bigger dedicated systems, it can create images which still push my own artistic vision and display them at gallery quality and sizes, and I was shocked how good the prints were.”
Maybe USB-C helps with the cables, I’m guessing many of those are failed cables though. In any case, I don’t think it will address disposable vapes or decorative lights.
Anyway, I dispute the 95% of gadgets number. I don’t think we can be too surprised disposable vapes ended up in the trash.
Honestly these things come and go, as they do in all big cities. Adapting to change, especially for large groups of people, is alway rough and tumble. I’m sure they’ll get it figured out eventually. Just in time for it to change again…
Also, most residents as Chicago disagree with your assessment of their housing affordability.
It would be nice to have a bit of documentation on what makes this library special as well. It’s a significant time investment to learn a library like this one well. So some information on why one should choose this over, say, http://snap.stanford.edu/
Would be very helpful.
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You’re not required to buy the tile to take the lessons