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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

#461

Post by sennight »

minikites wrote: post #444
ethbr0 wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So what happens when every economy becomes developed? What happens when we can't rely on the existence of low wage workers?

Post-industrialized countries make it impossible to for those countries arriving late to the party to advance any further, by way of global environmental agreements and glass bead "carbon credit" payments, thereby ensuring a permanent pool of slave labor.

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

#462

Post by bluecalm »

evandijk70 wrote: post #449
rfd4sgmk8u wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stocks are a ponzi by definition. All growth in stock prices are dependent on extracting money from future investors. It gets a little more complex with corporate stock buybacks, but ignoring this, the price of a stock tracks a companies success, but is ultimately a product of the market buy/sells. Without injection of funds by the corporation, its a Ponzi like anything else. Even more so for stock that does not issu…

The idea of a stock is that it is worth the present value of all future dividends. Stocks that do not issue dividends and are expected never to issue dividends are indeed a Ponzi. I think those are by far the minority of stocks.

The idea that stocks that never issue dividends are somehow only valuable because other people think they are valuable (let alone calling it a Ponzi) is completely misguided. I mean if a company builds a pile of cash and never distributes it to shareholders it's still very valuable to have a say about how that pile of cash should be spent. If a company ammased a billion of cash there will be many takers to buy it for less than a billion just so they can direct that billion somewhere.

Of course there is also an option of closing shop and dividing the assets to shareholders or myriad other ways of making the assets valuable without paying dividends.

Those kinds of basic misconceptions about financial markets is what crypto evangelist prey on. It sounds pretty convincing to the ignorant but is just nonsense under scrutiny.

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

#463

Post by 35fbe7d3d5b9 »

HenryKissinger wrote: post #345
11thEarlOfMar wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Ignoring the other answers, I'll give an analogy I like: the same way the Go compiler is written entirely in Go!

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

#465

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

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

Moldex masks are made in the US. Their unique construction also protects them somewhat from counterfeits since the 3M masks are the low hanging fruit everyone is copying.

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

#466

Post by AnotherGoodName »

tdeck wrote: post #455
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…

> There's chips that I'm sourcing from obscure places in China just to get the part and paying whatever price they ask. When sourcing like this, how do you ensure that you're not getting factory seconds or counterfeit parts?

From my experience no one cares if they are as long as they more or less work.

Source: I'm a software engineer who has had to fix so many issues due to unannounced component changes from suppliers.

"Oh you just replaced the specific USB chip with something different that has a whole lot of errata (Bugs in chip logic that you have to work around in software) and didn't tell us? GREAT! THANKS!"

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

#467

Post by b9a2cab5 »

minikites wrote: post #444
ethbr0 wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So what happens when every economy becomes developed? What happens when we can't rely on the existence of low wage workers?

Eventually it becomes more profitable to automate. See: Sony's automated PS4/5 factory. Formerly these would've been assembled in some Foxconn plant by tens of thousands of low wage workers.

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

#468

Post by mensetmanusman »

ren_engineer wrote: post #372
monocularvision wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

The US is 4% of the world. All else being equal, we would eventually move towards manufacturing 4% of things.

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

#469

Post by acchow »

mensetmanusman wrote: post #453
HenryKissinger wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If all the chip making machines were destroyed and we couldn’t repurpose chips due to DRM, we would have to redo everything again.

Bootstrapping the second time is much easier

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

#470

Post by mensetmanusman »

minikites wrote: post #444
ethbr0 wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So what happens when every economy becomes developed? What happens when we can't rely on the existence of low wage workers?

It happens very gradually, and in aggregate we tend to end up working fewer and fewer hours per year.
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