According to our sources, the estimated Zen core design cost should be like $40-50 million per year. Now, contrary to what many people believe, the design cost of a core is not the most expensive part of a new CPU. For example, the design cost of Apple A4's core was just $30-35 million. Also, AMD has used the best parts of Cat cores and BD cores in order to save a lot of money.

The main costs that a company have to support for a new CPU are related to the adaptation to the newer process nodes, the debug testing, and the masks production (it could be necessary to produce a lot of masks if a lot of bugs are discovered during pre-production tests).

Also AMD, thanks to its semi-custom and custom clients, can save a lot of money. Most costs are shared between AMD and its clients. Actually, like ARM Holding, AMD costs are especially related to cores (CPU and GPU) design.

Pubblicato in: News, English News
Tags: amd , cost , debug , r&d; , test , zen

Autore: Gian Maria Forni
Esperto in: Esperto di mercati e CPU

Sebbene sia laureato in Lettere e Filosofia, indirizzo Storia Contemporanea, e scriva per quotidiani e riviste di tale settore, ha sempre avuto la passione per l'informatica ed ha collaborato quale moderatore in importanti forum del settore

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