>so you're stuck building obsolete parts on an obsolete process.
"Stuck"? Generally speaking, they can charge an arm and a leg for those older parts due to small volume. When I previously worked at a company that supplied hardware for a military application, they were still buying decades old hardware at about a 10x markup from when it was still in production for the general commercial market.
Heck, in 2019 Global Foundries sold a 20 year old fab that IBM built in Fishkill to ON Semiconductor for $430m. IBM originally built it for ~$2.5B. You don't think they got their money's worth and then some? ON didn't buy it as an act of charity, they've clearly got a plan to continue printing money building chips out of that fab.
"Stuck"? Generally speaking, they can charge an arm and a leg for those older parts due to small volume. When I previously worked at a company that supplied hardware for a military application, they were still buying decades old hardware at about a 10x markup from when it was still in production for the general commercial market.
Heck, in 2019 Global Foundries sold a 20 year old fab that IBM built in Fishkill to ON Semiconductor for $430m. IBM originally built it for ~$2.5B. You don't think they got their money's worth and then some? ON didn't buy it as an act of charity, they've clearly got a plan to continue printing money building chips out of that fab.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GlobalFoundries
https://www.semiconductor-technology.com/projects/ibm_fishki...