[maemo-users] Nokia: Linux Needs to Learn Business

[From: Theodore Tso]

On Fri, Jun 13, 2008 at 03:54:40PM -0600, Mark wrote:
> 
> Because it *is* obvious. The fundamental assumption is that the given
> company has the size and resources to manufacture chips. Give that
> capability, yes, it is *always* cheaper for them to manufacture their
> own.

Your naiveté is touching.  You have no idea how expensive it is to
design modern, highly complex chips, do you?  The manufacturing costs
are only one part of it.  If you ignore the R&D costs, then sure, once
the chip is designed, making your own is cheaper but the startup costs
of doing your own design, even if you are going to amortize it over a
very large number of device, will generally push the per-unit cost of
a custom chip to becoming FAR more expensive than simply buying a CPU
from Intel or AMD --- or a wifi chip from Broadcom or a Video chipset
from Nvidia.

      	     	       	    	     	- Ted