> Unless you're NVIDIA, Intel, AMD, or Qualcomm, Apple, Samsung (you get the idea) why would you ever want to build anything besides "small and/or highly regula

> Unless you're NVIDIA, Intel, AMD, or Qualcomm, Apple, Samsung (you get the idea) why would you ever want to build anything besides "small and/or highly regular chips"? What's your point? The ASIC emulation market exists, there are several companies that build and sell ASIC emulators, and Xilinx and Altera cater to that market with dedicated FPGA devices. I'm not sure why you're arguing here.