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Originally Posted by Kingroudy

^^ can u state the source? cuz i've read that the 1ghz Snapdragon Chip found in high end smartphones costs 30$. the i7 isn't as compact, but it is much more powerful.

The costs are as follows:

• 130 nm: $400,000 to $800,000 used in mass production
• 90 nm: $1 to $1.5 million, now being used on prototypes or ASICs (application specific integrated circuits)
• 65 nm: $3 to $4 million. Scheduled to be ready for industry adoption in 2005

Source: Building a Sustainable Future for Photomasks

This is the tape-out cost for a chip. They only have to do this one time to photomask the integrated circuits and after that, the production of millions of similar chips will cost nothing and will be a piece of cake for the VLSI production machines.