[iron2disulfide]

The $1k figure quoted by OP is not indicative of the average price of licenses in my experience. There are plenty of tools that are $15k+ in the EDA world, and various engineers in chip design orgs are always battling about who gets to use them and when. There are whole teams in big SoC design shops dedicated to managing and procuring licenses.

I was pretty far removed from the license procurement and budgeting aspect of my last chip design job, but IIRC we were in the multi-millions per year in various EDA tool licenses. That figure may or may not have included IP licenses for pre-designed off-the-shelf subsystems.

[nsteel]

Same. We pay millions of dollars for our simulator licenses. Same again for physical design/layout licenses. These are for the standard ('best') industry tools, no IP. No idea what you get for $1k.

[artisanspam]

I hadn’t even brought up IP licensing but you’re right. That’s another order of magnitude of cost and it’s incredibly important.