The RP2350 is 2.65x the die size of the RP2040, so about 8000 chips per 3000$ TSMC 40nm wafer gives you $~0.35 per die. Say 10 cents per die for singulation and testing, and another 10 cents for packaging and processing into reels. I have no idea what the M33 per-unit license is, but something like 5-10 cents seems reasonable, so let's assume 5.
So that's a cost of $0.60 with a reel price of $0.80 for a $0.20 gross profit per chip. So the break even point for full respin of the masks is around 5 million sold chips, 10 million chips when we're including the original masks. For comparison, according to Eben Upton, 10 million RP2040s have been made (but not necessarily sold) from 2021 to 2023.
Would a fix result in 5 million additional chips being sold? Maybe, and for all we know they could be working on doing that just now. Maybe their contract with the pad design provider even pays for a new mask set and it actually costs them nothing. Maybe all of this can be fixed with a cheaper metal layer fix.
But either way this isn't 'peanuts' and it's not a clear cut if doing it is economically viable.
The RP2350 is 2.65x the die size of the RP2040, so about 8000 chips per 3000$ TSMC 40nm wafer gives you $~0.35 per die. Say 10 cents per die for singulation and testing, and another 10 cents for packaging and processing into reels. I have no idea what the M33 per-unit license is, but something like 5-10 cents seems reasonable, so let's assume 5.
So that's a cost of $0.60 with a reel price of $0.80 for a $0.20 gross profit per chip. So the break even point for full respin of the masks is around 5 million sold chips, 10 million chips when we're including the original masks. For comparison, according to Eben Upton, 10 million RP2040s have been made (but not necessarily sold) from 2021 to 2023.
Would a fix result in 5 million additional chips being sold? Maybe, and for all we know they could be working on doing that just now. Maybe their contract with the pad design provider even pays for a new mask set and it actually costs them nothing. Maybe all of this can be fixed with a cheaper metal layer fix.
But either way this isn't 'peanuts' and it's not a clear cut if doing it is economically viable.