That number is not even close to reality.
AMD quoted the same.
This confirms the same.
"While initial estimates for new chips at 16/14nm have ranged as high as $300 million....how internal costs are assigned by
companies to amortize them across departments. The cost of moving to a new process node can be huge. Qualcomm, which reported revenue of $24.9 billion in fiscal 2013, said the price tag is
$2 billion. "
http://semiengineering.com/the-real-numbers-redefining-nre/
"Huang said that thousands of engineers have been working on the Pascal GPU architecture," noted Tim Prickett Morgan, coeditor of our sister site The Next Platform. "The effort, which began three years ago when Nvidia went 'all in' on machine learning, has cost the company upwards of
$3 billion in investments across those years. This is money that the company wants to get back and then some."
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/04/06/nvidia_gtc_2016/
If NV has 5 distinct designs, say GP100, GP102, GP104, GP106, GP107, that's roughly $3B / 5 = $600 million per chip. I realize they didn't design them in isolation but people expecting a 5120-6144 CUDA core GP102 sounds more like they are very disappointed with GP100's 3840 @ 1.48Ghz projected performance rather than grounded in any actual facts/evidence.
Thus far there is no indication whatsoever that GP104 will have 4096 CUDA cores and GP102 will have 5120-6144 CUDA cores. Until further information leaks, we have 10+ years of NV GPU history with Tesla/Quadro and Flagship GeForce. That history tells us that NV's largest and fastest Tesla/Quadro/GeForce chip was largely the same. That suggests until further leaks that contradict history, GP102 GeForce will be a variant of GP100 with different GPU / memory clocks to up the performance for gaming.
Extrapolations of 6144 CUDA core 1080Ti with 1.5Ghz sounds like some made up fantasy based on those leaks we've seen recently that literally doubled everything from Maxwell and called it a day. Looking back to G80, GTX280/285, GTX480/580, GTX780Ti, the fastest Tesla/Quadro and fully unlocked flagship GeForce were based on roughly the same silicon with minor adjustments. There was no mythical gaming chip with 50-60% more performance than the flagship Tesla/Quadro card.
Yet, on this forum people are predicting GP102 to have 60% more CUDA cores than GP100, while retaining similar GPU clock speeds? Ya, so:
6144 CCs @ 1480mhz / (3072 CCs x 1075 Titan X) = 2.75X the performance increase, without accounting for Pascal's IPC.
I guess all that wait for Pascal and expectations is getting to people's heads, huh?
Word on the street is that.. there is already a 6 month allocation of P100s and one of the customers that are hoarding this right now is google.
Im sure we will see cut down versions of the DGX-1 (thinking these will come at Q1'17).
I am down with that theory, especially since this already happened with Kepler. Not only did NV release a cut-down Titan, but they released an even more cut-down GeForce based on the version of the flagship Kepler die.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/6973/nvidia-geforce-gtx-780-review
Even for 25% extra performance (launch data), NV still released a massively cut-down Kepler die.
If you compare 780 to 580 at launch, that's 64% faster. It's only later that NV released a fully unlocked and MUCH higher clocked 780Ti and Titan Black. What's stopping NV from repeating this exact strategy with Pascal since it worked so remarkably well?
How many people upgraded from 670/680 to 780 to 780Ti? The more upgrades for NV, the more $ they make.
Also, if flagship GP102 has 5120-6144 CUDA cores @ 1.48Ghz or so, not 1 person in this thread from what I have seen has come up with how in the world will NV increase that level of performance another 50-100% with Volta on the same 16nm FinFET? Let me guess this GP102 is a 400-450mm2 die only and flagship Volta with 8000-9000 CUDA Cores will be >600mm2?