Chip shortage: Toyota to cut global production by 40% • Hacker News Board

Re: Chip shortage: Toyota to cut global production by 40%

#411

Post by throwawaygh » Thu, Aug 19, 2021, 3:32 PM UTC

QuarterReptile wrote: post #367

robotresearcher wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s negative WRT the chip production rate.

No, still positive. Negative feedback is self-righting, while positive feedback is amplification (to speak in very broad terms.)

No! It's negative WRT chip production rate! I have a phd in controls and meant what I said; I assume roboticsresearcher also knows some freshman-level control theory ;-).

Stability ==== good in undergrad engineering, but not here. We DON'T want production rate to be stable when we have a global supply shortage! Here, a negative feedback loop is stabilizing the system in an undesirable equilibrium.

I.e., the function that's being controlled in "supply of chips", the stable state is "saturated supply", and the negative feedback loop that maintains that equilibrium is "starving chip fab suppliers".

(meta: people down-voting comments on control theory terminology by two different experts in this field at least makes me feel a bit better about the signal:noise ratio on the vote counts on my other comments in this thread ;))

Re: Chip shortage: Toyota to cut global production by 40%

#412

Post by mywittyname » Thu, Aug 19, 2021, 3:33 PM UTC

cutemonster wrote: post #370

Scoundreller wrote: post #328

Many countries have a funny concept of strategic industries. In mine, dairy is a strategic industry that is coddled by government so that we can have a local source. But every country thinks that so there’s foes and allies that can supply us UHT or powder milk on a moment’s notice. And if our milk supply disappeared tomorrow, everyone over 1y could substitute with 10000000 different things for nutrition. Cars are ano…

> picking and choosing which industries are important voting bases. And on a bribes and corruption basis, to some extent, too? For example, I never thought about what are the strategic industries, when voting.

Most voters aren't as rational as you are. Though, I suspect that you would not vote against your livelihood if it became a political topic.

West Virginia has "Friends of Coal" license plates. Indiana has IUOE license plates. etc.

Re: Chip shortage: Toyota to cut global production by 40%

#413

Post by cptskippy » Thu, Aug 19, 2021, 3:33 PM UTC

duncanawoods wrote: post #362

cinntaile wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They probably did, the only cards they produce under the Nvidia brand are the Founders Edition cards and those are sold for MSRP. Everything else is made by their partners and those cards increased in price.

Yes, soon after posting I realised I was referring to Asus/MSI/Palit etc. rather than Nvidia. It means either two levels of auction or the Nvidia chip sale is a % of the end unit sale.

> Palit

I've never heard of this brand, are they big in regions outside North America? Or do they function as an ODM for other brands?

Re: Chip shortage: Toyota to cut global production by 40%

#414

Post by xyzelement » Thu, Aug 19, 2021, 3:35 PM UTC

fartcannon wrote: post #399

xyzelement wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Finance guy here, two things. You are looking at it in retrospect. "I should have bought a house" is no different than "I should have bought X stock" when you're looking at the price history backwards. At the time, it could have gone up or down. EG we just bought a house, I have many reasons to expect that it could drop in value over the next bunch of years. Second, you may not be doing proper calculations. I would n…

Whatever helps you sleep at night :D My parents bought a detatched home at 20 with minimum wage jobs. I bought a townhouse at 40 with a high paying career. My kid is going to be 60 by the time he can afford a home. It's fucked. Buy now.

> It's fucked. Buy now.

Ok you certainly should go for it, but I'll give you one analysis that I have. We bought in a NYC suburb (for a bunch of reasons) and here's what I think constitutes price risk for me.

At the end of the day, a house is worth what someone can and is willing to pay for it. Right now, there's reasons the demand is high for near-NYC housing because (a) people aren't sure they need to be near NYC long-run and don't want to risk it (b) it's an easiest move to make to leave the city and not go far (c) supply is low because with covid, fewer people are willing to have an open house (d) now everyone is in a rush to upsize so space is at a premium.

All of these are demand factors that can change. EG: (a) it may become clear in 1-2 years that permanent remote is an option for many people, relieving demand pressure on NYC and the area. (b) once people are comfortable with leaving the city they may be comfortable moving further afield. (c) the pent-up supply of folks who didn't sell in 2020/2021 may come to market, especially if a and b occur, causing people to want to sell before it's "too late" (d) everyone who needed up upsize may have done it, relieving that pressure.

Also, for New York state specifically, with the number of wealthy people leaving the states, it feels inevitable that state and property taxes will rise, making all of this even less attractive.

And finally, interest rates are ridiculously low right now, rising rates will be a damper on prices when that happens.

Obviously there plenty of reasons it could also go up, but if your model is so simple "it's fucked so it's always goes up" you may get fucked too.

Re: Chip shortage: Toyota to cut global production by 40%

#415

Post by robotresearcher » Thu, Aug 19, 2021, 3:36 PM UTC

a9h74j wrote: post #369

robotresearcher wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s negative WRT the chip production rate.

It does have negative external effects, as you observe, in the sense of a viscious circle. But even a viscious circle, mathematically, has positive feedback, resulting initially in a positive exponent growing against time, not a negative exponent damping out in time.

Doesn’t positive feedback require a positive loop gain? Right now, not enough chips are available to make new chips. So the loop gain is less than zero, damping the output recursively.

Re: Chip shortage: Toyota to cut global production by 40%

#416

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Aug 19, 2021, 3:36 PM UTC

duncanawoods wrote: post #322

mathattack wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just the opposite. Need to let people raise prices to encourage slack in the system. Let’s prices settle where chip makers can produce new chips. There are market failures where the government needs to step in, but this isn’t one. Even with climate change (where they should step in) the government can’t get to the point of saying it’s ok for gas prices to be high. We don’t want the government to pick winners and lose…

It's a puzzle to me why companies like nvidia didn't just raise prices and instead left both customers and profit to the dirty world of scalpers. I guess it's "brand damage" but I feel there would be something more fair and honest if in times of tight supply they ran their own ebay-like store and auctioned them off. It wouldn't feel like a price hike and prices could automatically settle as supply/demand reaches pari…

[deleted]

Re: Chip shortage: Toyota to cut global production by 40%

#417

Post by jvanderbot » Thu, Aug 19, 2021, 3:37 PM UTC

Scoundreller wrote: post #328

Many countries have a funny concept of strategic industries. In mine, dairy is a strategic industry that is coddled by government so that we can have a local source. But every country thinks that so there’s foes and allies that can supply us UHT or powder milk on a moment’s notice. And if our milk supply disappeared tomorrow, everyone over 1y could substitute with 10000000 different things for nutrition. Cars are ano…

How much would it cost to set up TSMC inside US borders? One president cycle? 4 F-35s? One SLS? A nuclear submarine?

According to this page, sorting by cost, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_semiconductor_fabricat...

the most expensive fab is 33 Giga$. TSMC is 17G$. pennies on the dollar in our 1-3Trillion infrastructure bill.

Make america fab again.

EDIT: it appears this is in the 2T infrastructure bill. https://www.eetimes.com/biden-ups-ante-to-50-billion-for-chi...

Re: Chip shortage: Toyota to cut global production by 40%

#418

Post by mywittyname » Thu, Aug 19, 2021, 3:37 PM UTC

sonthonax wrote: post #393

shadowgovt wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Every country props up its auto industry, so why worry about a domestic supply? War. In the event a war breaks out, a running auto plant can be re-tooled relatively rapidly into a light and heavy armor plant. It's not even a question of whether allies could supply tanks and troop transports; it's about having domestic capacity to make them because enemies could execute blockades and disrupt allied resource supply.

Is that still true now?

Yes.

One scary fact that I learned is that, in war games between China and the USA, China almost always wins due to superior production capacity. Those $100B American battle carriers and $40MM advanced fighter jets can be taken out by $50,000 rockets/missiles produced at a rate of hundreds or thousands per day.

Re: Chip shortage: Toyota to cut global production by 40%

#419

Post by guerrilla » Thu, Aug 19, 2021, 3:37 PM UTC

unethical_ban wrote: post #403

Scoundreller wrote: post #328

Many countries have a funny concept of strategic industries. In mine, dairy is a strategic industry that is coddled by government so that we can have a local source. But every country thinks that so there’s foes and allies that can supply us UHT or powder milk on a moment’s notice. And if our milk supply disappeared tomorrow, everyone over 1y could substitute with 10000000 different things for nutrition. Cars are ano…

Indeed, there seems to be a difference worth noting between "industries that currently employ a large number of the population with little transfer of utility to other industry" and "objectively basic needs for a society". I figure there are also different definitions of strategic depending on the size and capability of an economy. The US is large and geographically fortunate enough that it theoretically "could" be a…

> Indeed, there seems to be a difference worth noting between "industries that currently employ a large number of the population with little transfer of utility to other industry" and "objectively basic needs for a society".

Did you consider that it's because people need an income to survive? Employment is objectively a basic need for anyone who doesn't own sufficient capital being that they have nothing else to sell but their labor.

Re: Chip shortage: Toyota to cut global production by 40%

#420

Post by WillPostForFood » Thu, Aug 19, 2021, 3:38 PM UTC

hef19898 wrote: post #312

eldaisfish wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this is survivorship bias, nothing more.

The bias is more that we go through cars faster, generally, then they die. And once a car isn't used anymore, it just rots away. Or it gets exported to some developing country to happily life for another couple of decades. How that would work with modern electronics, I don't know. Probably as long as electronics don't brick the car it should fine I guess.

The bias is more that we go through cars faster

Is that true though? Average length of car ownership is at an all-time high of over 8 years. It was under 5 years just 20 years ago. Maybe length of ownership doesn't correlate to length of car life, but seems like a strong signal that car quality and lifespan is going up.