In short
First-silicon success — a chip working as intended on its first tape-out — fell to 14% in the 2024 Siemens / Wilson Research Group study, a 20-year low. A re-spin at 7nm to 3nm costs roughly $5–30 million for the mask set alone, plus three to six months of the whole team.
What is first-silicon success?
A project achieves first-silicon success when the first chips back from the fab work well enough to go to production without another tape-out. When they don't, the design is corrected and taped out again: a re-spin.
What does a re-spin cost?
The visible cost is the mask set: roughly $5–30 million at 7nm to 3nm, by industry consensus across foundry data. The larger cost is time. A re-spin takes three to six months of the whole team, and the product reaches its market a quarter or two late.
Why is the rate falling?
Designs are larger, they integrate more third-party IP, and they carry more software. Each adds hand-offs between teams. A re-spin is often traced not to a mistake in one block but to a missed hand-off: a specification that changed after verification planned against it, or an IP version that moved late.
What actually moves the odds?
Finding the problem while it is still cheap to fix. The same issue found at RTL costs a day; found after tape-out, it costs a mask set. That makes time-to-discovery the lever. Tymeline's design goal is that nothing which moves the date goes unseen for more than an hour.