Re: You're probably right
> OTOH, It's not clear that semiconductors that are a few years behind the best possible technology aren't perfectly fine for making consumer goods and equipping an army.
Not everything in consumer products require bleeding edge fabs.
e.g. The Raspberry Pi 4B BCM2711 CPU is made with a 28 nm process. A 28 nm process was picked by the Raspberry Pi foundation because it is the lowest cost per transistor (older processes with larger transistors would physical use more space on the silicon wafer which would cost more, and smaller transistors are created using newer machines which cost more to use). The 28 nm process is the current "value node" and will probably remain so for probably the next 5 years. TSMC have had a 28 nm process since 2011 and SMIC (China) have had a 28 nm process since 2013. It is not bleeding edge being nearly a decade old.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
