I'd imagine the economics of variable / nonrecurring engineering costs are different at that scale. Their tech might only let them make 200MHz chips instead of 2GHz, but couldn't they just make ten times as many of them?
It's been a long time since CPUs have seen much of a bump in clock rates, after all - nowerdays it's all about smaller features allowing more cores/cache in the same space. If you don't care much about space as your process costs are dominated by setup rather than wafer costs, wouldn't you just use more space?
Let's say the NSA's chip fab is 10 years out of date - the same technologies as an Athlon XP "3000+" 2.1 GHz CPU with a 70 watt TDP. Worked just fine in a lot of consumer desktop PCs.
If they needed a lower TDP, couldn't they just drop the clock rate and use wider features for lower gate leakage?
It's been a long time since CPUs have seen much of a bump in clock rates, after all - nowerdays it's all about smaller features allowing more cores/cache in the same space. If you don't care much about space as your process costs are dominated by setup rather than wafer costs, wouldn't you just use more space?