Nashua, 2010
“What are we going to do? We can’t find any way to get the bandwidth we need to implement the darn function. The entire program depends on that front-end.”
“All because those silicon guys we work with decided they could delay introducing that new process for a while since the consumers didn’t quite need it. And now they’re saying they might change the base libraries in such a way that our analog designs are useless. We’ll have to start again. All because of that stupid VR application for teenagers that seems to be consuming all the silicon they have…”
“We can’t seem to get a straight story, but it seems they’re planning to delay our lots until they have cornered this market… something about opportunity cost.”
Notes:
Different priorities and the competitive nature of the silicon business is likely to make it increasingly difficult for military users to get predictable and high-priority access to silicon. In addition, if military users are to add their own special designs to the chips (for particular needs), changes in process driven by commercial needs will create a major process portability concern, especially for analog or mixed-signal designs.)