Quote of the Day
I never haggled with the president, I swallowed the little things so that I could go to bat on the big ones. I never handled a matter apologetically, and I was never contentious.
— George Marshall on his relationship with FDR.
Introduction
Figure 1: Typical Integrated Circuit (Wikipedia).
I recently was asked by some staff members to describe the key variables that drive integrated circuit costs. To answer the question, I decided that the best teaching approach was to prepare a spreadsheet that includes all the critical parameters along with some computational examples – people can try different parameters and determine the critical cost sensitivities on their own.
The cost model I use is one that I saw in a lecture years ago, and it still gives me useful results. I originally captured the model in Mathcad. Because my audience has expanded a bit, I decided to include an Excel version because more people are familiar with Excel than Mathcad. For complex work, I always initially capture my models in Mathcad because it is much easier to validate an algorithm in Mathcad than Excel (e.g. automatic unit conversion is a lifesaver). I can then use Mathcad to troubleshoot my Excel results.
There really is no analysis in this post. I just captured an existing model in two different formats. If you want background on the integrated circuit cost model, see the following documents:
This Excel workbook is in my standard template for calculators. My Mathcad worksheet is a bit more free-form. Both are in this zip file.