> You now need clever circuit design and humans who can squeeze another 15-20% out of existing technologies. Unfortunately, all the humans who knew how to do cu

> You now need clever circuit design and humans who can squeeze another 15-20% out of existing technologies. Unfortunately, all the humans who knew how to do custom VLSI design are dead, retired, or doing something else since custom VLSI was fool's errand for so long (see DEC, IBM, Silicon Graphics, etc.). Broadwell is a custom-designed part, and it's scaled extremely well from 22nm to 14nm. There have been yield issues going to 14nm, but the biggest hurdles have been solved, with a lot of help from the design team. I guess Intel must have hired all the people you think are dead or retired.