Nvidia went with Samsung because they knew the competition could touch them on tsmc and because it was cheap.
Calling a 60% gross margin charitable is certainly something. Im not going to say anything else as the numbers speak for themselves. No argument you pose really holds weight when compared with the numbers.
You need to decide which process you're going to use long before you have any clue where your competition will end up. It was a risk which paid off, but it just aswell could have backfired.
Profit per unit is a rather vacuous metric. The more relevant figure is the company's net profits as that includes all costs - the argument for an excess of profits will reflect in their net revenues, although that's somewhat obfuscated by further investments. eg. a company could makes...shoes. They could operate on 5% profits a year for decades, growing slowly from a family company to a notable chain with world-wide branding. Then a change of management comes in and wants to make more money, so they decide to branch out into anime. They greatly increase the profit margins on their shoes and channel that into their anime business. The corporate financials perhaps show losses, the C-suite perhaps make more money than ever, the shoe workers maybe take a pay cut, and the purchasers of the shoes lament increased prices and lower construction costs and don't feel their shoe needs should be 'taxed' to pay for the corporate anime aspirations or the C-suites new yachts.
Where are you getting billions from?
Consumers have a right to demand this by only buying products when they do. It’s not my job as a customer to worry about wafer costs.
Absolutely. I’m not going to buy a $2.5K GPU either. Doesn’t matter to me if others do. It’s not for me.
Has to come from the top. Left to itself a company tends to gradually turn into a short-term optimization machine. Employees start optimizing for their own personal protection/growth — which is not *wrong* as a co-optimization objective but toxic if it’s the only thing driving you. Groups become competitive tribes. Bean counters gain more power, and engineers and middle managers with the worst instincts end up getting hired and/or promoted. The degradation is natural. To prevent it you need a strong benevolent dictator at the top who imposes a vision that everyone rallies around, weeds out the crabgrass way before it can become a problem, and fends off attacks from vultures (active investors, Wall St) during tough times.
Interesting perspective. I think these ethical considerations may ever so slightly nudge a buyer in one direction or the other but are not a dominant factor.