Scale is not your friend. If you sell high-volume low-margin hardware, your value proposition will always be smaller than the low-volume high-margin products be

Scale is not your friend. If you sell high-volume low-margin hardware, your value proposition will always be smaller than the low-volume high-margin products being made. Working with Apple is smart in the early game, but increasingly foolish as TSMC has a value proposition that extends beyond Apple's designs. They don't need Apple to bootstrap new fabs anymore, because Nvidia and OpenAI will buy them out-of-pocket. So, if Nvidia ends up with extra fab space amid a RAM shortage, I think they'll pivot to RTX chips and Jetson boards that have already proven to retain their value. Nvidia can retain capacity and justify the cost because there are still buyers lined-up out the door. The iPhone and iPad have no actual usage for wafers this dense and Apple knows it; it would be idiotic to start a bidding war over 2nm capacity when your flagship product is a gambling tablet. > I claimed that DIY computers rarely make economic sense over non-DIY computers today Like the other commenters said - hasn't that always been the case? You could have told Linus Torvalds this in the 1990s and strictly speaking you'd be correct. That sentiment has had zero salient impact on the health of custom computers or the longevity of DIY machines built to-task. China still ships Noctua fans and PC cases between flip-flops and sex toys because we will pay $100 for some plastic with ball-bearings inside it. DIY computers have never made sense, and it has never been a serious threat to their existence. Not today, not 30 years ago neither.