Intel Corp (INTC)

[Dmcq]

re: Yes, because the economics continue to become more amenable to everybody building their own chips!

The graph you show relates to systems that have become much more complex with time. They are now for instance designing their own 16nm 4 wide 4 thread processor for a SoC with lots of connectivity. The IBM 360 series when it was released cost IBM $5 billion dollars in 1960's money and their total systems put together would fit on a corner of such a chip. Most people will take a processor as a complete unit from an IP vendor which has been pre hardened for a particular foundry and only need to design their own special block. The big cost now is the foundry and you're paying that cost anyway if you want lots of the chips.

BY the way you might like to look at the contribution of architecture and software. The software for ARMv8 has been taking a lot of time developing over the last couple of years with thousands of things to be checked.