It just seems there would be a much easier way to come up with a product besides creating the actual physical chip from scratch.
Ranking in order of "easiness" to produce from high to low:
CPU - $0 start up
GPU - near $0 start up
FPGA - $10,000's start up capital
ASIC - $1M+ start up capital
Ranking in order of profitability:
ASIC - custom designed chip
FPGA - custom designed firmware on available chips
GPU - custom code running on widely available graphics cards
CPU - custom code running on every computer
Funny how technology works out like that... (sarcasm)