Right -- that $0.15 chip is only possible to be made at the end of the lifecycle of a $10 billion dollar asset (the fab); that fab can only be made with a $500

Right -- that $0.15 chip is only possible to be made at the end of the lifecycle of a $10 billion dollar asset (the fab); that fab can only be made with a $500 billion dollar development to make all the supporting stuff. You can't make that $0.15 chip on a new fab partially because the chips made on a super tiny process are different in a whole bunch of different ways (operating voltages, temperature / environmental tolerances, etc). Maybe you can scrape together enough legacy parts from expired fabs to make some number of legacy "new" fabs, but even that's super tricky because just making the fab facility itself is hugely expensive and you can't fund it by selling the high margin parts that funded the 1997 fab from 1997 to 2004. The designs need to change to allow using the higher density nodes (redesign entire ecosystems of parts / products) or you need to accept that the $0.15 part is now a $20 part for the next 6 years or longer.