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I'm a bit surprised by a wafer pricing chart. Sure, the individual wafer cost goes up; but if you have a design with the same transistor count, the size of your chip is going _down_, which means that you'll have _more_ chips per wafer (assuming comparable yields), which means that individual chip cost will go down.

(40/28)^2 ~ 2, so if 28nm is not that bad comparing to 40nm, assuming, again, comparable yields.



This is precisely the analysis given in the per-transistor pricing crossover chart. That shows that the old rate of wafer price increase still allowed for significant per-transistor cost advantage fairly quickly. The whole point is that the rate of wafer price increase has itself increased to the point where these crossovers are barely happening anymore.


Problem is, they aren't going to have comparable yields at the same time. The newer tech will have a lower yield.




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