This trend (if it's actually happening) is a symptom of the death of Moore's law. When Moore's law was operating in full swing, it would rarely make sense to build your own chip using open source. In the time that you could design and build your chip, general processors would have doubled in speed and you'd be better off waiting for the general processor.

Here are a few predictions, some of which have already occurred, that may result due to the death of Moore's law:

Already Happening:

- More custom chips (squeezing the last bit of performance)

- More reliance on the cloud, to push off processing power where there are more economies of scale

- The rise of traditionally "second tier" processor manufacturers (e.g., AMD, ARM) to be head-to-head with traditional leaders (e.g., Intel).

- A greater amount of chip manufacturers R&D dollars spent to each dollar of revenue.

Starting to Happen

- China and developing countries catching up with chip technology (when the leaders are no longer growing exponentially, it's easier to catch up)

- Governments imposing their will on chip developers (when there is less competition over performance, other factors like trust and national origin will start mattering)

- Trade secret theft, i.e., in the past if you stole Intel's designs, you would get one good chip, but that theft would be obsolete in 18 months. Now, it gives you a much longer advantage.

- An societal shift from utility to branding, i.e., as all goods start becoming equal, branding is the main differentiation.

- Living standards catching up to western and U.S. standards.

Further Afield:

- No significant technological improvements for decades.

- Stagnant per-worker/capita productivity.

- Economic growth becoming far more tied to population than individual productivity.

- Economies/governments fighting to increase their population (e.g., through legal immigration or by force).

- Government's power and control becoming based more on population rather than ideals or innovation (e.g., China).

- More monopolies ... in a dynamic and innovative society, a small smart company can defeat a larger slower one. In a stagnant society, that won't work and the competitive advantage can only be obtained by consolidation and economies of scale.

- Social unrest ... in an exponentially growing society, there is room for every generation to become wealthier than their parents, but in a flat society, on average half will become richer and half will become poorer.