Semico Research claims the cost of developing 28nm SoCs is 78 percent higher than the previous node (40nm), and that the cost of designing the software that is necessary to ship with SoCs rose by 102 percent, making it a greater expense than the cost of the IC design itself. The good news however is that Semico predicts that future growth of chip design cost will be lower, the research firm forecasts 20nm will be 48 percent more expensive than 28nm development. After that the 14nm node is expected to increase costs by 31 percent, while the switch to 10nm is estimated to result in 35 percent higher costs.

While the cost of SoC design at the 28-nm node is 78 percent more than it was at the 40-nm node the cost of writing and checking the necessary software went up by 102 percent, the market researcher claims. And the software burden will increase close to doubling in cost every year. Semico predicts a compound annual growth rate for SoC software development of 79 percent through to the arrival of the 10-nm chip manufacturing node. The cost to integrate discrete IP blocks used in contemporary SoCs is also rising showing a CAGR of 77.2 percent, Semico said.

28-nm SoC development costs doubled over 40-nm