Ask Slashdot: How Do You Estimate the Cost of an Algorithm Turned Into an ASIC

"Another coder and I are exploring the possibility of having a video-processing algorithm written in C turned into an ASIC ("Application Specific Integrated Circuit") hardware chip that could go inside various consumer electronics devices," writes Slashdot reader dryriver.The problem' There seems to be very little good information on how much a 20Kb, or 50Kb or indeed a 150Kb algorithm written in the C language would cost to turn in an ASIC or "Custom Chip". We've been told that "the chip-design engineering fees alone would likely start at around $500,000." We've been told "the cost per ASIC will fluctuate wildly depending on whether you are having 50,000 ASICS manufactured or 5 million ASICs manufactured." Is there some rough way to calculate from the source code size of an algorithm -- lets say 100 Kilobytes of C code, or 1000 lines of code -- a rough per-unit estimate of how much the ASIC hardware equivalent might cost to make' Why do we need this' Because we want to pitch our video processing tech to a company that makes consumer products, and they will likely ask us, "So... how many dollars of extra cost will this new video processing chip of yours add to our existing products'" There were some interesting suggestions on the original submission, including the possibility of C to HDL converters or a system on a chip (SoC). But are there any other good alternatives' Leave your own thoughts here in the comments. How do you estimate the cost of an algorithm turned into an ASIC'Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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