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TSMC hikes chip prices up to 20% amid supply shortage

asia.nikkei.com

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Re: TSMC hikes chip prices up to 20% amid supply shortage

#91

Post by jjoonathan »

da_chicken wrote: post #46
skohan wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As it should be. Without competition, and with demand outstripping supply, TSMC is free to find the price the market will bear.

In the short term, sure, I'll buy that. In the long term, monopoly or near monopoly of any sort will turn toxic.

Right. If AMD and Intel both got out of the fab business, on account of it being low margin, then TSMC would promptly yoink their collective margin, because if you choose the king you get to charge for the privilege. Fortunately Intel decided to compete instead.

See also: AMD and NVidia, and whichever other pairs rely on leading-edge nodes.

Re: TSMC hikes chip prices up to 20% amid supply shortage

#92

Post by formerly_proven »

cletus wrote: post #55
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #32

Supply shortage is another way of saying demand excess. I don’t see much evidence that TSMC ever really slowed production, at least for their most advanced processes that are in high demand. This is yet another way we’re all forced to pay the price for cryptocurrency. As long as GPUs are profitable for mining, they will be purchased and put to work. The saddest part is that each additional GPU added to the mining net…

I agree with this but it's even worse than that. Estimates on Bitcoin energy usage put it at over 1TW now. I believe it was comparable to the energy consumption of Argentina. Advocates will defend this by saying most energy usage is renewable. This conjures the image of someone with a bunch of solar panels but the reality is that it's primarily hydro power because that's the cheapest. Thing is, in regions with cheap…

> Advocates will defend this by saying most energy usage is renewable.

Even if true (iirc there is a lot of doubt whether it is, see Iran), it's still moronic, because consuming renewable energy for shits and giggles obviously means that other energy demands are being met with your usual energy mix instead of that renewable energy that went into shits and giggles as assumed. In terms of net emissions it simply doesn't really matter whether you A) use non-renewable energy for BS or B) use renewable energy for BS, displacing other energy users to non-renewables.

The simple fact of the matter is that there is no free lunch and there is NO ecological way of randomly wasting energy.

Re: TSMC hikes chip prices up to 20% amid supply shortage

#93

Post by 1980phipsi »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #72
cwizou wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don’t see much evidence that TSMC ever really slowed production, at least for their most advanced processes that are in high demand. One thing I heard is that the drought (worst one in 50 years in Taiwan) has really affected them, and various sources seem to confirm it, here's one : https://fortune.com/2021/06/12/chip-shortage-taiwan-drought-... And while I wholeheartedly agree with the crypto/GPU issue, all in a…

> And while I wholeheartedly agree with the crypto/GPU issue, all in all, the GPU market is overall fairly tiny compared to TSMC's total output. From an economics perspective, it doesn’t really matter. The price of a market-rate good is the marginal price of producing one more unit. As long as cryptocurrency is financially incentivizing people to consume 100% of the marginal production, prices will continue to go up.…

GPU's are market-rate goods?

Re: TSMC hikes chip prices up to 20% amid supply shortage

#94

Post by vimy »

photon-torpedo wrote: post #42
temp8964 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not just purchase a used one on eBay?

Prices for used GPUs are also inflated, though I think they have started to come down a bit. Once Ethereum moves to proof-of-stake (early 2022?) the market will probably get flooded with used GPUs.

Miners will probably move to Ethereum classic.

Re: TSMC hikes chip prices up to 20% amid supply shortage

#95

Post by formerly_proven »

_huayra_ wrote: post #73
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #32

Supply shortage is another way of saying demand excess. I don’t see much evidence that TSMC ever really slowed production, at least for their most advanced processes that are in high demand. This is yet another way we’re all forced to pay the price for cryptocurrency. As long as GPUs are profitable for mining, they will be purchased and put to work. The saddest part is that each additional GPU added to the mining net…

Honest question: is it possible to make a cryptocurrency that does not rely on some real-world scarce resource (e.g. chips, electricity, drive space)? This seems to be a cornerstone of what makes any crypto valuable in the first place (scarcity), and as long as that scarcity has real-world consequences, it seems like it would have the same result. Chia claimed to "Save the world from proof-of-work wastage", but it wo…

The underlying problem is that you need to prevent sybil attacks, i.e. group X creates many peers in the network and so gets much more voting power than they "ought to" have.

The only known way to do so is through attaching a real-world cost to ~votes. The way PoW does so is through equating votes and hashrate, so votes cost real money because hashrate requires real hardware. PoS works in mysterious ways, but the basic idea is that votes are equal to prior balance by essentially putting some of that balance "into escrow" in order to vote.

Re: TSMC hikes chip prices up to 20% amid supply shortage

#96

Post by Geee »

f6v wrote: post #15
tyingq wrote: post #11

The chip shortage is interesting to me. In that it seems to be mostly driven by bad forecasting both by clients and the foundries. But the foundries seem to get nothing but upside out of it. Perhaps it swings next time and there's excess capacity.

I wonder if food shortages are possible for the same reasons.

Absolutely. If there's a fear of shortage, shortages will happen. There are also chain reactions to whole economy.

Re: TSMC hikes chip prices up to 20% amid supply shortage

#97

Post by cle »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #32

Supply shortage is another way of saying demand excess. I don’t see much evidence that TSMC ever really slowed production, at least for their most advanced processes that are in high demand. This is yet another way we’re all forced to pay the price for cryptocurrency. As long as GPUs are profitable for mining, they will be purchased and put to work. The saddest part is that each additional GPU added to the mining net…

According to TSMC's chairman, the shortages are mainly due to:

- Covid-19 effects on production

- US-China trade war

- Increased demand due to the pandemic

- Increased 5G demand

- Increased HPC demand

https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Tech/Semiconductors/TSMC-he...

https://roboticsandautomationnews.com/2021/05/26/tsmcs-chair...

Re: TSMC hikes chip prices up to 20% amid supply shortage

#98

Post by xxs »

lobochrome wrote: post #85
ATsch wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The toilet paper shortage is kind of a bad example, because it was caused by a very real and sudden shift in demand from the very seperate commercial and personal toilet paper manufacturing markets.

Is there a source for this?

look for companies retooling their output - company toilet paper rolls are quite different than home use

Re: TSMC hikes chip prices up to 20% amid supply shortage

#99

Post by xxs »

_huayra_ wrote: post #73
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #32

Supply shortage is another way of saying demand excess. I don’t see much evidence that TSMC ever really slowed production, at least for their most advanced processes that are in high demand. This is yet another way we’re all forced to pay the price for cryptocurrency. As long as GPUs are profitable for mining, they will be purchased and put to work. The saddest part is that each additional GPU added to the mining net…

Honest question: is it possible to make a cryptocurrency that does not rely on some real-world scarce resource (e.g. chips, electricity, drive space)? This seems to be a cornerstone of what makes any crypto valuable in the first place (scarcity), and as long as that scarcity has real-world consequences, it seems like it would have the same result. Chia claimed to "Save the world from proof-of-work wastage", but it wo…

the short version is: "NO", if there is no barrier to enter/mine/plot/whatever - then it'll be abused to no end.

Re: TSMC hikes chip prices up to 20% amid supply shortage

#100

Post by another_story »

cwizou wrote: post #63
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #32

Supply shortage is another way of saying demand excess. I don’t see much evidence that TSMC ever really slowed production, at least for their most advanced processes that are in high demand. This is yet another way we’re all forced to pay the price for cryptocurrency. As long as GPUs are profitable for mining, they will be purchased and put to work. The saddest part is that each additional GPU added to the mining net…

> I don’t see much evidence that TSMC ever really slowed production, at least for their most advanced processes that are in high demand. One thing I heard is that the drought (worst one in 50 years in Taiwan) has really affected them, and various sources seem to confirm it, here's one : https://fortune.com/2021/06/12/chip-shortage-taiwan-drought-... And while I wholeheartedly agree with the crypto/GPU issue, all in a…

Drought has been over for awhile now and it never really slowed chip production.
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