Quote:
Originally Posted by mlangsdorf
So say the job lot size for a microchip is 400, and the microchip costs $200. It costs $200*400*20 = $1.6M to produce an assembly line for microchips,
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I know you're spitballing, but that seems quite low. Thinking about disc drives, my own industry, to process a wafer (with, say, 50,000 usable heads on it) will take something like $10-15M in capital to go from a finished wafer to singluated heads, maybe more. Disc drive heads are cheap relative to microchips, though the 50,000+ head wafer itself requires equipment that can cost $35M a pop. The photolithography tools are, per unit made, the most expensive. Vacuum dep tools are the most expensive per unit, at least in my line of work. The photo tools for microchips (deep UV and whatever) are probably most expensive both in a per-unit-made and per-machine-acquired basis.
You're in a better place, sounds like, than I am to think about real chips, but I'd guess that there should be some sort of cost multiplier that's applied on a "smallest feature" scale. A few tens to hundreds of microns is pretty easy at TL8, but my tolerances for deposition were measured in fractions of an atomic layer (maybe 1/10 the usual crystal lattice dimensions).
And it may be, again, that the ridiculously capable and very flexible microprocessor, as opposed to your usual ROM chip where it Does One Thing is a big deal.
I've only secured the purchase of vacuum, photolithography, and other clean room equipment for the disc drive head industry, but those are usually $1.5 to 6.5M each, and that's but one part of the process.