TSMC hikes chip prices up to 20% amid supply shortage • Hacker News Board

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

#341

Post by AnthonyMouse » Thu, Aug 26, 2021, 5:31 PM UTC

f6v wrote: post #314

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is yet another way we’re all forced to pay the price for cryptocurrency. Bitcoin has existed for more than a decade. This is yet another way we're all forced to pay the price for COVID-19. When everybody started working from home, companies whose employees had desktops had to buy them all laptops. People with old home computers bought newer ones once they started using them 14 hours a day instead of two. Deman…

> Bitcoin has existed for more than a decade. But I haven't seen "buy bitcoin here" signs in the cities(that aren't tech hubs) until recently. Now people are randomly asking "what's the next big crypto?" trying to make quick money.

People have been trying to make quick money since the invention of money.

"The easiest way to make a small fortune is to start with a large one."

It has nothing to do with Bitcoin energy consumption, which is only a real problem because we're not pricing carbon as we ought to be.

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

#342

Post by Taek » Thu, Aug 26, 2021, 5:32 PM UTC

skohan wrote: post #262

dkersten wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> more ML processing I would argue that most ML processing by most "big data" companies also has marginal negative output for each additional GPU. Certainly anything to do with social media or adtech and a lot of analytics in general is a net negative for the world, while consuming electricity and processing hardware.

That's a value judgement, which is different than the case with POW which structurally devalues the output of each additional GPU.

It structurally pays less per GPU as you add more GPUs, because the security budget is a zero-sum budget. (though, that's only if you ignore extrinsic effects, and some people argue that more security = higher coin price = higher security budget).

Even if the security budget is zero-sum, the amount of actual security added to the network with each additional GPU is constant.

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

#343

Post by cwkoss » Thu, Aug 26, 2021, 5:33 PM UTC

vardump wrote: post #33

sylens wrote: post #7

Starting to get the feeling that the current prices for PC components are here to say.

This might be the start of the end of high-end PC gaming, unless prices get back to a more reasonable level. Consoles (and phones) are very competitive and cost significantly less. Or perhaps it just causes the games to have lower performance requirements. Is integrated graphics the future of PC gaming?

I feel like high-end PC gaming, trying to maximize graphics of brand new titles has always been a silly dick-measuring competition.

For me the sweet spot of games is 2-8 years old. Reviews are out, so you can skip the crap. Patches have been released to fix bugs. And everything that has stood the test of time runs pretty well on low- to mid-tier hardware by now.

Dust off those games in your steam library that you never touched before.

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

#344

Post by formerly_proven » Thu, Aug 26, 2021, 5:34 PM UTC

hackingforfun wrote: post #321

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK, but those exact same places could power servers instead of miners, taking a load off of wherever the servers are currently hosted.

It's cheaper for them to just flare the gas. The only thing that has made economic sense, as an alternative to flaring it, is to mine Bitcoin. I understand the energy criticism, but flare gas is an example where Bitcoin mining actually makes something less polluting.

Three points

- It's approximately a 180° pivot to go from "unused renewable energy" to "flare gas for green bitcoins"

- It doesn't reduce the emissions. Whether you flare it or burn it in a gas turbine / engine driving a generator to mine bitcoin, the CO2 released is exactly the same, as you are burning ~100 % of the hydrocarbons either way. The difference is that one generates bitcoins, the other does not. This is only valuable to bitcoin stakeholders, and as has been pointed out up and down all these threads this is either of approximately no value or of negative value to society at large. And overall, creating the equipment to mine bitcoins with flare gas, and deploying that to remote oil fields w/ no use for gas, creates a bunch of emissions that simply don't exist if you just flare the gas.

- There are non-emissive alternatives, e.g. gas re-injection. Note that the great majority of unwanted gas is already dealt with this way. This means that mining bitcoins using flare gas has a very good likelihood of increasing the share of unwanted gas that is effectively flared, again, increasing emissions.

Reducing the amount of flared gas (and putting it through a turbine to mine bitcoin is the same as flaring it as far as emissions go) is in fact an UN IEA goal.

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

#345

Post by HenryKissinger » Thu, Aug 26, 2021, 5:35 PM UTC

11thEarlOfMar wrote: post #287

iyn wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of curiosity, what's the $10,000,000 product?

As parent indicated, they are machines that make chips.

How were the chip-making machines made before there were chip-making machines?

Can't chip-making machines be made without chips? Yes. The very first one, at least, was made like that.

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

#346

Post by bitcurious » Thu, Aug 26, 2021, 5:36 PM UTC

_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…

>Chia claimed to "Save the world from proof-of-work wastage", but it would just turn a GPU crunch into a HDD crunch.

Chia actually hasn't resulted in an HDD crunch. The economics of it are such that further investing in HDD storage isn't profitable, yet already Chia is the most decentralized and resilient crypto. I say resilient because price collapsed but allocated storage hasn't.

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

#347

Post by machiaweliczny » Thu, Aug 26, 2021, 5:36 PM UTC

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…

Yes, but efficiency is opposite of roboustness/resiliency.

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

#348

Post by dkersten » Thu, Aug 26, 2021, 5:37 PM UTC

malaya_zemlya wrote: post #158

dkersten wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> so votes cost real money So it doesn't actually fix the problem, it just means only the richest have any real power, just like the financial industries outside of crypto.

that's what being rich means - being able to control a large share of resources.

Sure, but a lot of the pro-cryptocurrency people say (or used to, at least) that cryptocurrencies will liberate us from the existing power structures. But it doesn't really, because the people with pre-existing power can just as easily buy their way into power over cryptocurrencies too.

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

#349

Post by pbourke » Thu, Aug 26, 2021, 5:38 PM UTC

pjscott wrote: post #313

pbourke wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple’s move, a decade ago, to control their own silicon seems quite prescient.

They have their own chip designs, but the manufacturing is done by TSMC.

Indeed, but they control the supply chain risks to a much greater extent now.

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

#350

Post by monocularvision » Thu, Aug 26, 2021, 5:39 PM UTC

ren_engineer wrote: post #172

pcurve wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

"service economy" was always a meme being sold to the gullible masses, manufacturing capacity is the only thing that matters for an economy. Manufacturing has always printed the money It amazes me how the US allowed itself to be nearly deindustrialized after manufacturing effectively won them WWII and global dominance. Now the US can't even make ventilators or face masks

US Manufacturing is still going. In fact, we manufacture more than ever. Folks conflate manufacturing with manufacturing _jobs_. Our manufacturing is more efficient then ever which is why you constantly hear this false refrain that US manufacturing is down or gone.