I&#x27;m not sure on <i>most chips</i>. I do know if you look up MOSIS, etc prices you&#x27;ll find that most of the cost of the prototyping run is the masks. The masks start at tens of thousands then just go up from there. High-end nodes are in millions to tens of millions. Every prototype run of your chip takes a new mask. Hence, all the money spent on proprietary tooling to reduce odds of digital or physical defects. Many ASIC&#x27;s still need respins. Then, there&#x27;s 3rd party stuff like I&#x2F;O packages.<p>Now, compared to that, the silicon wafer might cost a few grand with packaging (not volume) costing $10-20 a unit. For any OSS project, dare I say most of the cost will be in the first paragraph and recouping it will take significant unit prices. How significant depends on what&#x27;s being sold and at what volume. A PIC or AVR clone at modest volume will be cheaper than an Oracle T2 clone at low volume. Hope that helps.