Cost to design motherboard

N

N. Funk

Guest
Having a conversation will a friend concerning motherboard design and
construction costs. What it boils down to is he states motherboard
design is relatively inexpensive due to automated computer design and
modeling software. I contend that it still cost large sums of capital
to design, proto-type and debug (test & troubleshoot) problems.

Anybody has an idea on the cost to design an manufacture a motherboard?

Any information is greatly appreciated!

Nick
 
"N. Funk" <nfunk@rtconline-nospam.com> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
news:40AE0052.2080803@rtconline-nospam.com...
Having a conversation will a friend concerning motherboard design and
construction costs. What it boils down to is he states motherboard
design is relatively inexpensive due to automated computer design and
modeling software. I contend that it still cost large sums of capital
to design, proto-type and debug (test & troubleshoot) problems.

Anybody has an idea on the cost to design an manufacture a motherboard?

Any information is greatly appreciated!

Nick
Click to expand...
That must be very cheap, because motherboards are cheap. So costs will be
around 55$ !? :)D)

Ok, this joke is bad, but the idea to make yourself a motherboard is not
much better.
In priciple the task should be simple, because you often only connect
readily available components like chipsets, connectors, etc.
But consider layout (who the hell makes these genius taiwan 4-layer
mb-layouts !!!), signal integrity issues (buses carrying signals of over
200MHz) and adaption of a BIOS, which all involves lots of know-how. And if
you do not manufacture zillions of motherboards, you have no chance to get
the components from the vendors.

MIKE
 
N. Funk <nfunk@rtconline-nospam.com> wrote:
Having a conversation will a friend concerning motherboard design and
construction costs. What it boils down to is he states motherboard
Click to expand...
It'll vary.
An 8 layer board will be considerably simpler to design, and can probably
be done completely automatically in many cases, with little human input.
A 5 or 4 layer board is much, much harder to get to work.
But it's lots cheaper to make.
 
Had lunch this week with someone one an Intel motherboard design team. They
were at the same EMCcourse I was taking. They need a team that varies
between 5 and 30 members at different times working over several months to
get an aceptable motherboard and the higher the CPU speed, the longer it
takes.

To Intel, it is not that expensive, maybe $500,000 but to yo and me, that's
not pocket change.

Dan
 
Yeah, that is the ball park figure I was thinking of.
Thanks,

Dan Fraser wrote:
Had lunch this week with someone one an Intel motherboard design team. They
were at the same EMCcourse I was taking. They need a team that varies
between 5 and 30 members at different times working over several months to
get an aceptable motherboard and the higher the CPU speed, the longer it
takes.

To Intel, it is not that expensive, maybe $500,000 but to yo and me, that's
not pocket change.

Dan
Click to expand...
 
"N. Funk" wrote:
Yeah, that is the ball park figure I was thinking of.
Thanks,

Dan Fraser wrote:
Had lunch this week with someone one an Intel motherboard design team. They
were at the same EMCcourse I was taking. They need a team that varies
between 5 and 30 members at different times working over several months to
get an aceptable motherboard and the higher the CPU speed, the longer it
takes.

To Intel, it is not that expensive, maybe $500,000 but to yo and me, that's
not pocket change.

Dan
Click to expand...
Years ago, I made considerable amount of money doing circuit board
layouts. Z-80, 6502, 8088, 286 CPU boards, memory and I/O boards.

It was all hand taped on translucent film.
Usually done at 2X full size and photo reduced.

Actually a lot of fun.
I charged about $200 for a small board, maybe $500 for S-100 boards.

Then I found Orcad and never touched a roll of tape again.


These days with clock speeds and pin density an order of magnitude
higher, hand laid artwork would probably have to be 8X full size??
just to get the required registration, but it could still be done.

But it wouldn't be any fun...

Richard Lamb
 
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