NRE

• NRE (“Non-Recurring Engineering”) charges are the costs associated with developing an ASIC.

• NRE is based on a number of factors like:

–the complexity of the design,
–the technology chosen (# of masks required)
–the amount of work to be done by the customer and by the silicon vendor
–the need for special cells or procedures
–the type of package required
–the schedule the number of layers of metal

• The more work the silicon vendor does and the more special the requirements, the higher will be the NRE . The more work the customer does, the lower the NRE.

• Array-Based designs require the fewest number of design-specific masks and therefore offer the lowest NRE to prototypes.

• Cell- Based designs require all masks to be generated for the chosen process and therefore the NRE charge will be higher for a Cell-Based design than for an Array-Based design.

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