(here at Medium-Size-Fabless-Semi-Inc, I'm in the middle of revving a bunch of parts that are about 10 years old, not because we want to add new features to them but because the process node is so obsolete it's becoming difficult to fab. Yes, they're getting new features, but that's not the primary driver of business)
On the other hand, because parts are physical objects, you can charge money for them. Piracy is .. not nonexistant (ask FTDI) but not a major concern.
There are some interesting corners for rapid-rev electronics, but there's a decision tree:
- can I do this with a microcontroller?
- if not, how about an FPGA?
- ok, there really is no alternative to ASIC, is the market size enough to support that?Everyone hates change, when the fallout of the outcome of the change is on THEM specifically and impacts their career. That's why SW people keep picking Oracle, Microsoft, Google, etc
With an appropriate debug core in the same wafer, designers who'd completed a tape-out could connect to their chip well enough to repeat their design-verification tests on this real hardware, remotely even (no need to physically handle the device 'til you're certain it's working.) Once satisfied, customers could promote their design to be bonded out for installation into their PCB.
"Sure thing boss, we'll add an extra USART core to this afternoon's tape out."
You can do that, but it’s going to turn out poorly.
Plus, the only way fab costs become achievable are MPW runs which don't have adequate demand for multiple daily runs. The ones I've used run a few processes each month, rotating between most of them on a bimonthly to quarterly basis. They just don't fill up fast enough. But I'm small time fabless so maybe I'm missing something.
They do this, it's called a multi-project wafer (it's on Wikipedia). It doesn't help with lead time of course. As far as I know tape-out cost is a lot cheaper (if your design is microcontroller-scale) but still in the $100k+ region.
On the other hand, having it public makes exploits more likely since everyone can take a look.
For software this is beneficial, any fixed bug or exploit is then available to everyone and can be easily deployed.
I'm not very familiar with hardware but it seems like it would require new chips to be manufacturered to really fix any issues.
Everyone can take a look, but not everyone will spend money to produce their own. So this will improve security, not reduce it.