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Eventually the tech to create the chips will become more common and people will make their own purpose built chips. Eventually.

• hwillis 4y ago
  That assertion fits worse with this industry than like, any other. The constant flow of freshly obsolete semiconductor machinery literally feeds entire other industries. There is always a huge amount of easily available equipment to make high performance semiconductors because new technology is constantly replacing it with new tooling. Expertise and facility time are the limiting factors. Low volume purpose built SOCs will never be cheap (outside chiplet-based designs) because the ability to fill out a production line is critical to amortizing the immense startup cost of a design. It is already possible to have completely custom chips built in lots of <100 on older manufacturing nodes. Runs cost low five figures to low millions of dollars. Some college courses involve having an entire chip made. Anyone can order one on 20-30 year old equipment. There is no demand and it will never get significantly cheaper aside from mass-produced chiplet ICs.
  • R0b0t1 4y ago
    You could say the same thing about something less niche like spectrum analyzers 20-30 years ago. They used to take up equipment cabinets, and you needed purpose built versions for specific analyses.