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Semiconductors Demand 30% Above Supply, 20% Year-on-Year Growth

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11–20 of 170 posts

Re: Semiconductors Demand 30% Above Supply, 20% Year-on-Year Growth

#11

Equipment companies are running at an all-out sprint to ship fabrication equipment. Applied Materials, the world's largest by revenue, has 1,390 open positions. #4 Lam Research has 570. The equipment space is brutally cyclic, akin to the oil services industry. Revenue can jump as much as 60% year over year, only to plummet 40% the next. It's always worrisome to see these macro-trends, feasting now, but famine sure to…

> Applied Materials ... has 1,390 open positions. #4 Lam Research has 570

With this many openings they must be having problems actually getting stuff done. But as you suggest, by the time they get a good chunk of these openings hired for they'll be looking to cut heads again. People who have been through one cycle before probably aren't inclined to go through the buzzsaw again and so move onto other industries.

Re: Semiconductors Demand 30% Above Supply, 20% Year-on-Year Growth

#12
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good thing we aren’t doing anything to destabilize a climate system that’s not causing us too much trouble as of now.

You mean, like manufacturing electronics? It takes about 1MWh to manufacture a laptop, the same energy needed to drive a Tesla for 3000 miles. https://www.networkworld.com/article/2229029/computer-factor...

also lots of purified water

Re: Semiconductors Demand 30% Above Supply, 20% Year-on-Year Growth

#13
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good thing we aren’t doing anything to destabilize a climate system that’s not causing us too much trouble as of now.

You mean, like manufacturing electronics? It takes about 1MWh to manufacture a laptop, the same energy needed to drive a Tesla for 3000 miles. https://www.networkworld.com/article/2229029/computer-factor...

It’s all interconnected and inter causal in a gigantic mess.

Re: Semiconductors Demand 30% Above Supply, 20% Year-on-Year Growth

#14
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good thing we aren’t doing anything to destabilize a climate system that’s not causing us too much trouble as of now.

You mean, like manufacturing electronics? It takes about 1MWh to manufacture a laptop, the same energy needed to drive a Tesla for 3000 miles. https://www.networkworld.com/article/2229029/computer-factor...

> the same energy needed to drive a Tesla

who are the memeticists driving this analagy into our collective consciousness? why is this popularizing? ive been seeing this crop up more and more frequently.

it feels a bit like begging the question, except the arguer also holds TSLA

Re: Semiconductors Demand 30% Above Supply, 20% Year-on-Year Growth

#15
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good thing we aren’t doing anything to destabilize a climate system that’s not causing us too much trouble as of now.

You mean, like manufacturing electronics? It takes about 1MWh to manufacture a laptop, the same energy needed to drive a Tesla for 3000 miles. https://www.networkworld.com/article/2229029/computer-factor...

So probably 10MWh to build a Tesla, before even driving it?

Re: Semiconductors Demand 30% Above Supply, 20% Year-on-Year Growth

#16
And people scream at nvidia trying to segment the market a bit and/or price gouging. Meanwhile nowhere near all launch day orders (7 months ago) 3080 orders have been delivered, and at this rate I suspect there will be new gen out before all the outstanding 3080 orders have been fulfilled.

Re: Semiconductors Demand 30% Above Supply, 20% Year-on-Year Growth

#17
Given the strategic importance of semiconductors and how expensive new fabs are and how long they take to start production (if you start planning a new state of the art fab now it'll take ~5 years before it's ready to produce chips) it seems like perhaps we need to look a public-private partnerships here in the US. The Chinese government is funding fabs. While we tend to be squeamish about such things here in the US, it's likely we need to start looking at doing this. At the very least the US Gov could step in to capitalize two or three companies to start foundries similar to TSMC. When they get on their feet they would become fully private entities that would pay back any government loans as they become profitable. I'm not sure we have the time to wait to see if Intel will decide to go big into the foundry biz - they seem to vacillate on this pretty regularly.

Re: Semiconductors Demand 30% Above Supply, 20% Year-on-Year Growth

#18
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good thing we aren’t doing anything to destabilize a climate system that’s not causing us too much trouble as of now.

You mean, like manufacturing electronics? It takes about 1MWh to manufacture a laptop, the same energy needed to drive a Tesla for 3000 miles. https://www.networkworld.com/article/2229029/computer-factor...

Since we're trying to use human-understandable units for measuring energy inputs, It's also the same amount of energy that is necessary to boil 600 pots of soup.

Re: Semiconductors Demand 30% Above Supply, 20% Year-on-Year Growth

#19

30% above supply at what price? (shrieks in economist)

The free market has a bit of a problem here: A new state of the art fab can cost many $Billions and takes a good 5 years to go into production. Not a lot of companies have this kind of cash on hand or the ability to wait that long to achieve profitability. Also much of the current fab capability (TSMC, Samsung for example) is located in some geopolitically unstable places (Taiwan, South Korea). There's lots of risk to the global economy here.

Re: Semiconductors Demand 30% Above Supply, 20% Year-on-Year Growth

#20
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean, like manufacturing electronics? It takes about 1MWh to manufacture a laptop, the same energy needed to drive a Tesla for 3000 miles. https://www.networkworld.com/article/2229029/computer-factor...

> the same energy needed to drive a Tesla who are the memeticists driving this analagy into our collective consciousness? why is this popularizing? ive been seeing this crop up more and more frequently. it feels a bit like begging the question, except the arguer also holds TSLA

It's just a handy reference for energy usage, and I assume this figure is more readily available due to the car being battery powered. It's a bit harder to work out for an ICE-powered car, as you'd have to calculate the energy required to move the car based on aerodynamics and weight. I have no interest in TSLA stock, nor do I think Tesla is anything like the sustainable future of transportation. I mostly picked Telsa because it's Hacker News.

As you insist though, it's about the energy required to cycle 100,000 miles.

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