That, and upfront investment costs. Very few companies have a few spare billion to pour into setting up the infrastructure, plus deal with resource deals, regul

That, and upfront investment costs. Very few companies have a few spare billion to pour into setting up the infrastructure, plus deal with resource deals, regulations, politics etc.. I'm pretty sure that a lot of countries would prefer to be a bit more independent on the semiconductor side, but getting up and running is hard. > It looks like patents are actively preventing new companies in the semiconductor business. As far as I know, the really deep technology on the CPUs is actually not patented - it would be nearly impossible to reverse engineer or proof an infringement, but you'd need to reveal your methodology to file the patent in the first place.