I agree, there probably were some wastage on our project, but I'm only a lowly engineer so cannot really comment on high level decisions. There were a lot of engineers working on the project, wages tends to drive prices up quickly, and all the ip was developed from scratch. I don't work there anymore, moved to a smaller more nimble outfit. Thanks for your insight
This article is just an advert. I have worked on practically the same project as the second example with a different manufacturer and can tell you it is a lot more expensive than 5 million. This project was 90nm,3 years ago so comparable to 55nm nowadays, and minus the mcu, so there is no licensing costs. NRE of 20 million for design, development, and bringing to production. And I think it ran over budget, with only 1 silicon revision. With a final component cost of $1.20, it finishes up cheap compared to the cost of individual components, but the up-front costs are much larger than they are suggesting.
They only list mask sets here, not mentioning engineering time for 12+ months and design license tools, costing upwards of 1 million per seat. Then on top of that the PDK from the manufacturer. I would love to see the full cost breakdown and see where it becomes viable.