You make good points: the barriers to entry have dramatically decreased across a huge portion of the stack. With one notable exception: the cost and complexity

You make good points: the barriers to entry have dramatically decreased across a huge portion of the stack. With one notable exception: the cost and complexity of modern fabs increases every year while the companies involved consolidate or die out. tsmc could easily decide “we’re not gonna fab your RISC-V design” at any moment and you’d be more or less SOL. I mean, you could fall back to a 150 nm process, but that kills a lot of opportunities. And if things continue — if Apple, Amazon and Google move further in the direction of custom silicon — this will happen. Apple already has a pretty big advantage with their custom silicon — which they don’t sell for use in non-Apple products. Now just imagine if they brought tsmc in-house and had exclusive access to the most advanced fabs on the planet. Your ability to compete, and the room for people to build GPC would constrict MUCH further. We have this enormous, all-pervasive stack built upon a foundation of like 3 companies, in the midst of massive consolidation. I honestly don’t understand how so many people who think about that are comfortable with it.