One wafer processed on TSMC's leading edge N3 manufacturing technology will cost over $20,000 according to DigiTimes (via @RetiredEngineer).By contrast, an N5 wafer costs around $16,000, the report says.Of course the actual chip cost can still be relatively small compared to all the other parts that go into a modern smartphone or graphics card.Dies per wafer calculators estimate Nvidia can get about 90 chips from an N5 wafer, or a base cost of $178 per chip.all contribute probably at least twice that much, but the real cost is in the R&D aspects of modern chip design."