Good question. That's a strange graph in general. I think most items have little to do with the node choice.

From the article:

> The $1.5 billion figure involves a complex GPU at Nvidia

I think the graph shows how much it costs a company in total to design a chip at different nodes. In general, chip vendors add more functionality with each generation. That seems to be what the graph shows.

The article says the graph comes from International Business Strategies. Their web page tells me to install Flash, which was enough to prevent me looking further:

http://www.ibs-inc.net/#!reports

Also, someone should tell them that IBS stands for Irritable Bowel Syndrome.

There isn’t that kind of increase at all, it’s pure BS. Costs for semiconductor design don’t scale that way. Even the costs for semiconductor manufacture aren’t like that.

Not clear, but I suspect it means newer, better modelling and synthesis.

That probably reflects the higher complexity of ICs at cutting edge nodes - being that newer node are an enabler for denser ICs.