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If a mask set is 50 million and you only need ten chips, these guys would only need to come in under 5 million per chip to win on cost.

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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.

If you only need 10 chips, you may just be able to use 50 or even 500 FPGAs.

500 VU19P will cost less than 5 million.

Not if you want to put it somewhere small like a satellite or bunch of other things.

https://roboticsandautomationnews.com/2020/06/09/xilinx-laun...

Xilinx launches ‘industry’s first’ 20 nanometer space-grade FPGA chip

There's a large number of applications which cannot be done in an FPGA, for instance any complex GHz-clocked digital circuit, or many analog circuits.

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