Economies of scale are governed by how difficult it is to optimize something, and how accessible the research is. A huge part of the cost of a chip is the desi

Economies of scale are governed by how difficult it is to optimize something, and how accessible the research is. A huge part of the cost of a chip is the design. You can get custom fab jobs for under $10,000. But if the design requires you to implement hundreds of op codes, the chip will be nowhere near that cheap. With simpler specs, a lot of this design cost is reduced. You may not be able to get 11nm chips, but you don't need that to be competitive. You just need to be close enough that your performance hit is not a deal breaker, at a price that's not a deal breaker.