Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

TSMC hikes chip prices up to 20% amid supply shortage

asia.nikkei.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

431–440 of 620 posts

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

#431

Post by yholio »

wuliwong wrote: post #398
yholio wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's certainly not a good example. The price has grown much faster than inflation in the western world, while the issuance of new currency has trended down, not only as a percentage of total money supply, but in nominal terms: https://www.wisdomtree.com/-/media/us-media-files/blog/blog-... While in theory the community can elect to inflate the money supply, in practice the people who get to vote on the issue are ho…

There is always confusion when discussing deflation and inflation because there are multiple definitions. There is a inflation/deflation which refers to the size of supply and then price inflation which refers to the cost in some other fiat currency. The former is simple and clear, the latter depends on other variables.

Ethereum is deflationary by both definitions, the market value increases while the rate of disbursement decreases with time.

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

#432

Post by Kirby64 »

hathawsh wrote: post #409
klohto wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What competitors lol? You can't exactly make chips in a basement.

That's starting to change. Sam Zeloof is inspiring. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7E8-0Ou69hwScPW1_fQApA

What he's making is basically caveman technology compared to actual cutting-edge nodes.

No offense to his accomplishments, but the modern fabs like TSMC are so advanced you cannot just make the things they make without billions of capital investment. It just is not possible.

Unfortunately, many of the chips in short supply are on pretty small nodes, so you need extremely specialized equipment limited to a few of the big players to make them.

Certainly there's some stuff that can be made in larger nodes, but if you want something in 5nm you basically have one game in town.

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

#433

Post by serg_chernata »

Hjfrf wrote: post #383
Tenoke wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

BTC GPU mining hasn't been profitable for years. ETH GPU mining (the main one) has gotten way less profitable recently and is scheduled to not be a thing in 6 months to a year. The GPU demand for mining has already lessened in the last months and you can see decreased 2nd hand prices.. Every comment that blames BTC for chip shortages is likely largely incorrect and looking in the wrong place.

What do you think ASICs are made of?

But is TSMC producing these ASIC chips?

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

#434

Post by monocasa »

rfd4sgmk8u wrote: post #387
monocasa wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We already live in a world where the government controls what software can run, and have been for at least 20 years.

Yes, in authoritarian regimes. Which is something we need to resist in the free world. Can you give an example of software (not data...) that is illegal to run in the US?

Tools for circumvention of copyright.

> (2) No person shall manufacture, import, offer to the public, provide, or otherwise traffic in any technology, product, service, device, component, or part thereof, that—

> (A) is primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title;

> (B) has only limited commercially significant purpose or use other than to circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title; or

> (C) is marketed by that person or another acting in concert with that person with that person’s knowledge for use in circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title.

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

#435

Post by ethbr0 »

minikites wrote: post #402
HeyLaughingBoy wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've worked for manufacturing companies my entire 30+ year career. It's not a dumb metric. It's usually pulled out in response to the silly complaint that "the US doesn't manufacture anything anymore." Sure, our share of global manufacturing is smaller, but that's hardly surprising when many more countries up their manufacturing game. A more interesting metric would be US percentage of total worldwide manufacturing a…

>I'd rather be building complex medical instruments than toasters. Why? In what way is it better to have a handful of elite workers creating a handful of units sold to a handful of consumers instead of having many ordinary workers producing many units for many consumers?

Because ordinary workers, producing many units, is a business with low margins.

And in modern developed economies, those margins are insufficient to support a decent salary.

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

#436

Post by natebleker »

HeyLaughingBoy wrote: post #382
ren_engineer wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

people always point to this dumb metric, "we're producing more than ever" compared to ourselves, while ignoring that the number in comparison to the rest of the world has dropped massively. Our share of global manufacturing is tiny compared to what it used to be

I've worked for manufacturing companies my entire 30+ year career. It's not a dumb metric. It's usually pulled out in response to the silly complaint that "the US doesn't manufacture anything anymore." Sure, our share of global manufacturing is smaller, but that's hardly surprising when many more countries up their manufacturing game. A more interesting metric would be US percentage of total worldwide manufacturing a…

I build complex medical instruments, I'd rather build toasters the way the chip shortage is nuking my BOMs right now.

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

#437

Post by tromp »

yholio wrote: post #431
wuliwong wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is always confusion when discussing deflation and inflation because there are multiple definitions. There is a inflation/deflation which refers to the size of supply and then price inflation which refers to the cost in some other fiat currency. The former is simple and clear, the latter depends on other variables.

Ethereum is deflationary by both definitions, the market value increases while the rate of disbursement decreases with time.

Regarding supply behaviour, you're confusing deflationary with disinflationary (yearly inflation rate going down toward 0).

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

#438

Post by skohan »

Taek wrote: post #342
skohan wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It seems like your argument is that cryptocurrency needs to use over half of the computing power on earth at any given time to consider it secure. That's a very bad standard. Visa and MasterCard don't need this much computing power for security.

Security is an easy argument to reach for when you want to justify something stupid.

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

#439

Post by nanidin »

gnramires wrote: post #426
elif wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious why we don't find a similar backlash to people who put their energy into a hot tub or to cool a 5x sized home.. as these cases don't even purportedly support a valuable economic mechanism. For instance. I don't cool my home with AC. does it bother you that I mine bitcoin overnight when the grid has surplus energy?

In the case of cryptocurrency, there is a clear better alternative that is Proof of Stake. It's caused by techological, economical and educational inertia. Cryptocurrency is driven by community consensus, and that's what we're doing here... discussing an outdated consensus (PoW supremacy) in the hope of changing it.

Proof of stake changes the game and raises the bar for entry. It essentially creates a "rich get richer" scenario where the only way to increase the amount of coin you have is to either already have enough to participate in proof of stake, or to buy the coin from someone else. In that light, I wouldn't necessarily say that proof of stake is clearly better than proof of work.

As an example, the proposed proof of stake mechanism for Ethereum requires 32 ETH, which is around $100k USD today. So established parties with capital will be able to stake, but your average person will not. I'm not sure I like that aspect of it.

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

#440

Post by fy20 »

dingaling wrote: post #197
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…

Bosch recently opened their own chip fab in Dresden, primary focus for now is on automotive chips and those required for their in-house tools and appliances: https://www.bosch.com/stories/bosch-chip-factory-dresden/

This makes a lot of sense as Bosch make so many automotive parts. In Europe, it doesn't matter whether you buy a BMW, a Peugeot or a Volvo, under the hood they are all using Bosch electronics to control the engine and many other parts of the car.
Post reply on HN