http://www.siliconquest.com/
For anyone who wants to know the price of run-of-the-mill silicon
wafers. Much cheaper than I thought they would be. The cost of the wafer
is basic to the cost of the IC. Most of the other costs scale with
quantity to a much greater extent. I believe the completed chips are
going to be 20-100 times the cost of the wafer depending upon quantities
manufactured (that includes the Fabs profit). Anyone have better
information than that?
So to make it clear if a wafer costs $300 and you can cut 12 full frame
sensors from it at 25% yield you average 3 usable sensors at a wafer
cost of $100 each. That give a minimum price of $2000 per sensor. If
they made 1/2 frame sensors they would get a higher yield and produce
maybe 9 usable chips per wafer, but also some of what would be scrap for
the larger chips (remember the chips are rectangular while the wafer is
round) would be usable so call it 12 usable chips from the same 6 inch
wafer that means a 18x24mm sensor would cost 1/4 as much as the 24x36mm
chip or about $500 each.
graywolf
http://www.graywolfphoto.com
"Idiot Proof" <==> "Expert Proof"
-----------------------------------
Toralf Lund wrote:
Rob Studdert wrote:
On 30 Sep 2005 at 13:45, Toralf Lund wrote:
I'm quite sure the price as such isn't high enough to matter - I
mean, if you can actually utilise all the silicon and/or don't need
special-quality material to get usable components. I have a chip in
front of me that measures 30x30 mm, and costs $10 per unit when
purchased in large batches...
I would bet that the area of it contains silicon is probably 25mm2 or
less.
I must admit I don't know how much of such a chip is actually silicon
- but I'm talking about one big, black lump of the size indicated, not
one of the obviously multi-unit thingies like modern CPUs.
Anyhow, the point is just that based on the fact that the price you
pay for various kinds of chips that at least contains *some* silicon
is next to nothing and/or hardly more than what the actual production
must cost, I'm find it hard to believe that the cost of silicon *as
such* is much of an issue in the context we are discussing here.
- Toralf
