Let's hope we start making chips domestically after this.
I want an Organic & Fair Trade, Fully Open RISC-V Raspberry Pi 5
The global chip shortage is starting to have consequences
111–120 of 741 posts
Re: The global chip shortage is starting to have consequences
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
Many products like water boilers, ovens or toasters can be built more robust without digital chips. I would argue we would see a overall quality improvement from having a bad chip shortage.
I would be careful to conflate internet connected trash with enough ARM cores and LoC to make your brain melt with the likes of a well placed humble microcontroller.. the mechanical or analogue components they replaced were usually far more temperamental, bulky, expensive and bad at their job. There are exceptional environments like in nuclear power, but for most purposes integrated electronics have improved reliabil…
Ye well I agree. As sibling comment pointed out I rather have a chip then a motor driven timer switch with fancy grooves.
My point is that simple systems like coffee cookers don't benefit much from having microcontrollers and you introduce alot of complexity.
My 3yo Mocca Master just have a timing relay and a switch for the aux. heater.
If they added a IC to have eg. a 'smart heater' or what ever the complexity and risk for making design errors would explode. With two switches you can enumerate the states of the system. With code you can't just look at the coffee machine and figure out exactly how it works while reviewing the design for production.
No code, no bugs.
Re: The global chip shortage is starting to have consequences
#113I've always wondered what it would be like to suddenly lose the ability to build higher technology like computer chips. Obviously this is just a shortage and not the same as manufacturing just vanishing, but the effects will be interesting to observe.
Many products like water boilers, ovens or toasters can be built more robust without digital chips. I would argue we would see a overall quality improvement from having a bad chip shortage.
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Re: The global chip shortage is starting to have consequences
#114> Production of low-margin processors, such as those used to weigh clothes in a washing machine or toast bread in a smart toaster, has also been hit. While most retailers are still able to get their hands on these products at the moment, they may face issues in the months ahead. I understand why the new advanced chips could face shortages, but why are there shortages for these basic chips. Can’t they be made anywhere…
I don't know but maybe one of the factors is that given how cheap microntrollers have become it's not uncommon to use an "overpowered" integrated chip just for ease of development. Suppose that you have to drive some LEDs on a washing machine, do you bother developing some optimized bespoke circuitry with discrete components or do you just slap a ~2$ 100+MHz 32bit Cortex controller that will let you implement all the…
With the amount of horrible infotainment systems in the wild i honestly doubt they’re using overpowered chips. I’m sure any consumer grade APU (ie. CPU with an iGPU) from the past 5 years would do better than the chips currently in cars.
Re: The global chip shortage is starting to have consequences
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
My washing machine doesn't automatically starting draining or drying after finishing, so I have to go up and down the stairs, and it has a mind of its own as to when it finishes. An ESP-32 is about 2 quid last time I checked, I have many, and I would happily attach it to the machine if not for the fact that it doesn't belong to me.
I have a washing machine from year 2000, and it has that functionality built in. Are you sure you read the manual?
I don't think so. I can't work out how the washing machine isn't obviously just an example.
Also, the thing that's more annoying is actually that the machine's alarm is extremely quiet and the timer very inconsistent (e.g. I made a Pizza oven that sends me an email, and it wasn't hard to do at all).
Re: The global chip shortage is starting to have consequences
#116There's useful technology, like computer controlling your engine to make it more fuel-efficient or whatever. And then there're "smart appliances", like a fridge with a screen. Do we really need it? The companies try to sell us more useless stuff, that's what it is.
If people do not want a screen on the fridge, then the sales numbers will tell manufacturers not to make that model. So much of product is experimentation, and often times the research and experiments ends up being wrong. So many products and companies fail when they go to market and find out nobody wants it. The other side of the coin are the products that are unexpected hits... There are so many things that have to go right... and it takes so few to go wrong.
Re: The global chip shortage is starting to have consequences
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
That was, at one time, true for "smart TVs" as well.
Yeah, though I would argue that smart kitchen appliances have a lot more going against them than smart tvs. - Historically, the TV has been used for playing media transmitted on radio waves, so an internet connected TV isn't a big surprise. - Television media formats seem to completely shift every decade or 2, so people are very used to buying something they'll throw away soon. - People usually take their televisions…
Not in the US, but back home I clearly remember moving countless fridges of friends to new apartment.
But true that appliance seems to be attach to the houses here. And correct, smart things are private things because of the nature of their work.
I have a fridge that my grand father used. And I’m not specially young. I love that fridge, simple and frugal in energy.
I suspect the smart fridge and the like will come with incentive from large comglomerate that also sell food.
The « two day delivery » of the smart fridge. I guess a coupon.
Oh well.
Re: The global chip shortage is starting to have consequences
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’d argue that on average the engineers working on these things understand things just barely well enough to implement these things in whatever hardware/software combination is selected. Any more understanding than that would be sub-optimal for shipping consumer products where cost optimisation is a primary concern as the salaries for more competent engineers would cost the company more. You can see this effect in ac…
So your default assumption is that a company whose entire division may be selling washing machines, doesn't give a damn about the programs that make those machines useful. Great.
Have you ever used Windows...
Re: The global chip shortage is starting to have consequences
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is correct. The industry is currently constrained on everything from water to wafers, in addition to fab time slots. Everyone is panic buying too, so shortages are getting amplified.
I'm a bit out of the loop. What is the cause of this? Since they are hitting multiple constraints at once I guess it's a demand spike?
Not who you responded to but newly released consoles are tons of chips, having to stay home meant more people buyer gaming PCs as well, everyone who started working from home required tons of new hardware while their desktops at work go unused, and money flowed from governments like water so everyone has money to buy all these things at once. Then on the supply side you had basically everyone stop working for at least a couple months some longer not only out of restrictions on the ability to work but restrictions that make a lot of processes much less efficient plus fear of going to work on top, then you had no one willing to return to many jobs because unemployment benefits have lasted for over a year (rather than normally a few months) and unemployment pays higher than your typical minimum wage job anyways with even the current the extra $300 per week, which was an extra $600 per week for a long time as well. This also means people that used to spend their time on higher wage and producing jobs end up spending a lot of their time doing things they would normally delegate off because no one wants to work those jobs. If you look at chips they are just one of many industries all with shortages for similar reasons, chips are just the worst shortage of all, mainly from all the work from home needs. In 2020 last year my computers power supply died.. there wasn’t one available with 100 miles. I drove to every store within about 20 miles to try to get back online same day. Even online Newegg and Amazon were all sold out, I had to spend about triple normal to by a power supply that was way too much for what I needed and pay extra for shipping it quickly. Not the same as chips but it was a similar need and far fewer people are needing power supplies versus chips.
Re: The global chip shortage is starting to have consequences
#120I think a lot of folks underestimate how fabulously complicated it is to fab a chip. Yes, you can diy it in your garage, here's a wonderful implementation. http://sam.zeloof.xyz/first-ic/
But take a look at the specialized tools they used. Heck, think about proper handling of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrofluoric_acid and this is just a simple amp. imagine trying to make something with lots of gates?
Making a single chip is _hard_. And that's just for a one off. doing that at scale requires an amazing amount of process control. And that diy chip is, according to the author "5µm (1975 tech. level)"
Anyway, yes, you could make a chip in your garage, but it'd take a lot of time to ramp up, and you'd only have 1.