At the start of risk production, by definition there have been no customer designs put through the fab. Actually this is not quite true, Sun explained. Before the start of risk production the company has already run a number of shuttles with test chips from customers, so foundry and clients are already starting to wring out the more critical structures in the first customer designs. But these test shuttles are not full chips either.

-- https://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/practical-chip-design/...

So, it's a point in the process where the foundry is taking a chance, and the customer is also taking a chance.

I've also heard it applied to a customer design, e.g. the customer starts to volume ramp production before they finish fully testing the design.

>> "Risk Production means that a particular silicon wafer fabrication process has established baseline in terms of process recipes, device models, and design kits, and has passed standard wafer level reliability tests."

It sounds like a batch produced to certify the process for insurance and contract purposes.

Risk production just means the "customer" will accept the parts from the fab without the parts being fully tested.

In other words, the customer is accepting the "risk" of parts not working. When the fab settings and test flow are mature then the fab assumes responsibility for parts that do not pass the testing.

You don't need to do anymore R&D or major NRE, but you may need to do a lot of tweaking and tuning. Risk production is generally low volume because stuff doesn't work so well yet.