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TSMC hikes chip prices up to 20% amid supply shortage

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

#121

Post by pcurve »

StephenSmith wrote: post #115

I'm in charge of sourcing components for multiple companies right now. I believe they could double (100%) prices and companies would pay it. There's chips that I'm sourcing from obscure places in China just to get the part and paying whatever price they ask. Designers are getting overwhelmed because they're having to redesign boards for components that are available, only to realize by the time they finish the change…

Their margin is approaching 40%. They're basically printing money at this point. It's hilarious how a manufacturer can be so profitable nowadays.

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

#122

Post by bluGill »

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.

That depends on if someone else gets in. AMD or Intel could if they wanted to - without the expertise it will be hard, but a few expensive years of research and they can get back into it. Hire a few TMSC people.

Or it could be someone completely new. The problem is hard, but solvable.

TMSC does have incentive to keep prices low enough that that doesn't happen. They also have other incentives to treat good customers well (though who the good customers are is an open question)

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

#123

Post by londons_explore »

qeternity wrote: post #104
positr0n wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But datacenter CPU/GPUs take the same wafers, machines, and factory time slots as consumer GPUs. Which that is the price increase this article is about.

Ok - I wasn’t replying to the article - I was replying to a comment about crypto-induced price increases of consumer gear being blamed on datacenters, which just isn’t true. It’s not that OEM prices are going up, it’s that retail prices are. Nvidia might sell a consumer GPU which is immediately resold on the retail market at 100% markup. This is driven by crypto, not DL.

> Nvidia might sell a consumer GPU which is immediately resold on the retail market at 100% markup.

The same might be said of event ticket resellers making a big markup.

But the reality is that, in the case of event tickets at least, it's very common for the original sellers and the resellers either to be secretly the same party, or at least have some kind of profit sharing agreement.

It's simply that the original seller doesn't want to be seen to be price gouging, so doesn't want to put the list price of an item up, but still wants to gain. That's frequently done by it being very expensive to become an 'approved seller' or similar.

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

#124

Post by Semaphor »

bavell wrote: post #68
orliesaurus wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use 980Ti too - i'm lighting 6 candles on the cake this year...It keeps me warm at night and during the winter. I am surprised it's still working after 6 years of daily use with that TDP and heat released.

My 970 is still limping along... kinda hilarious that it's paired with a 5950x in my new workstation. I'm impressed it can still play modern games pretty decently on my 1440p monitor although usually I've gotta dial it down to medium gfx settings. Gonna try to hold out till next gen, crossing my fingers supply issues have been sorted out by then.

I’m running an RX 470, since I upgraded one of my monitors to QHD, it has been having some issues. Luckily, I hate action games, don’t care much about high-end graphics, and grew up with 30 FPS as target ;)

Some day I’ll be able to upgrade to a new budget GPU.

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

#126

Post by marcosdumay »

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.

Well, the higher the price, the more incentive other companies have to catch up and compete with them. (Or take a more flexible portion of the market by price.)

Chip fabrication is a difficult market, with barriers to entry only similar to stuff dominated by governments, but there is still a little bit of competition there.

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

#127

Post by smhost »

ATsch wrote: post #71
zip1234 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While Crypto is certainly a contributor to demand, I think a large part of the problem is related to a demand spike similar to the 'toilet paper shortage', where companies try to stockpile because they hear there will be a shortage, which in turn makes the problem worse. Additionally, COVID stoppages caused chaos in supply.

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.

demand shift and panic buying are not mutually exclusive. and it also keeps happening (from this week: https://www.businessinsider.com/costco-shoppers-stockpiling-...)

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

#128

Post by bluGill »

tyingq wrote: post #18
johnnywasagood wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are contracts for years and years ahead so I doubt current price changes will impact Apple or any other major client.

Contracts are what they are, but they don't preclude discussions like "if we honor this as-is, it leads to a situation where we have no incentive to value you as a customer" .

Firm orders years in advance are in general far more valuable than much more expensive orders today. With the years in advance orders you can make plans around them.

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

#129

Post by raisedbyninjas »

formerly_proven wrote: post #92
cletus wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'…

Proof of work cryptos are a pox on society. That said they are some of the most location neutral energy consumers. This allows mining farms to be located adjacent to hydro dams or wind farms to get the cheapest energy and use energy that would otherwise be lost in transmission. 1TW is around 20% of global energy production. This is enough of a factor to impact manufacturing of renewable energy equipment. It allows them to achieve economies of scale faster and accelerate the transition to cleaner energy that we need.

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

#130

Post by MangoCoffee »

> The company has said it will make $100 billion in capital investments over three years through 2023.

>At the same time, "it will be very costly to manufacture in the U.S. and Japan," a member of the TSMC executive team said. The company is building a cutting-edge semiconductor facility in the U.S. state of Arizona and is considering opening its first Japanese chip plant in Kumamoto.

TSMC heed the call of US to build a new fab in AZ. It seem logical to raise their prices to meet this "demand". A fab in the US will not generate as much profit as Taiwan or China fab due to labor cost/benefits.

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