[Coco] COCO DTV

[Mark McDougall]

ben jimenez wrote:

> Thanks for the input, I was told that FPGA would be cheaper and such,
> but I have one question for you. When you say the process of taking
> and FPGA design and putting on an ASIC, and the cost would be
> hundreds of thousands of dollars. You mean for a batch of them right?
> not just one? Ok, if yes, that I understand, but I couldn't see how
> one ASIC chip could cost that much for one, then again, I am new to
> this community. I was using the C64DTV as and example of if she can
> do it why can't a great community like this do it too?

Yes, hundreds of thousands of dollars just for one! Why? It's the
tooling that costs the money, not the materials. That's why you don't
make ASICs unless you're selling hundreds of thousands of units.

Jeri didn't make the ASIC herself. She was approached by a very large
toy company which funded the manufacturing. Jeri designed the ASIC based
on the FPGA (they're similar) and got paid royalties from sales.

I'm a professional electronics design engineer, and we've designed FPGAs
for devices that sell a few thousand per year - and there is still no
way an ASIC is economically viable.

Believe me, an ASIC is just out of the question. Period.

Regards,
Mark