[CthulhuOvermind]

I can comment on this.

Hardware is a long and tedious process. CPU design is an extra level of difficult on top.

In my field, it is routine to hire people in late 40s/50s to make CPUs. I'm in my late 20s, and viewed as a weird specimen. In my career I've made a armv8 CPU and now work RV64.

It takes a couple of years to get a guy from uni into working shape. And that's just to teach him how to do 1-2 tasks in his field. If verification, this usually is coverage specification and test writing. Combine this with a cpu project duration average of 5ish years and it's quickly evident that you won't beat someone with a startup.

In my office today, in a team of 10, no one, other than me is under 40.

[xemdetia]

Something that always strikes me is how insanely complex it is to even experiment as an outsider to the university path. From my understanding a relatively simple 10+ year ago tech ASIC is still going to run like $10k USD for a shared die prototype from limited providers, compared to software, component level systems design, or even mechanical devices where you can get a local machine shop involved or at least do some parts of it yourself.

Yes, FPGA's exist but they are not even relevant when you are talking about the skillset/engineering discipline to make the FPGA itself and actually producing the physical thing.