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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

#491

Post by mywittyname »

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…

> One thing I heard is that the drought (worst one in 50 years in Taiwan) has really affected them,

The power issues earlier this year in Texas also impacted production.

Weather issues are often the cause of the bust cycles in silicon manufacturing. Just people outside of the industry rarely discuss when memory prices or whatever spike due to a typhoon hitting Japan/Korea/Taiwan. This year, we've have major weather events hit chip production across the globe, at basically the same time, plus the pandemic.

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

#492

Post by kragen »

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…

No, https://cbeci.org/ says Bitcoin uses 0.01176 TW, not 1TW. You can take a deep breath of relief! The real energy use of Bitcoin is only 1.2% of what you thought it was!

So, if you thought Bitcoin energy usage was a pretty bad problem but not world-endingly dire, you should now think it's insignificant. If that isn't what you think, it probably means that your opinions are not based on careful cost-benefit analysis, just partisanship, and should therefore be disregarded.

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

#493

Post by 11thEarlOfMar »

petra wrote: post #476
11thEarlOfMar wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As parent indicated, they are machines that make chips.

Why do they need 100,000 of the same part in a 10M$ machine?

One $10,000,000 machine uses about 1000 of these chips.

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

#494

Post by kragen »

raisedbyninjas wrote: post #129
formerly_proven wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 th…

As explained above, the real number is closer to 0.012 TW, so while the impact on the renewable transition is probably positive, it's very small, more like 0.1% of global energy production.

It's disturbing that nobody in this whole thread thought to fact-check those implausibly large numbers; it indicates that the whole thread is dominated by herd instinct, not rational thought.

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

#496

Post by spfzero »

pcurve wrote: post #121
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.

To their credit, they own unique tech that makes the chips built on it the most attractive in the market.

Very very few manufacturers are in that position.

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

#497

Post by vmception »

Rafuino wrote: post #473
vmception wrote: post #450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would that be bad for our own national security interests if we have our own semiconductor lines? What else does Taiwan offer to the US? We have "strategic bases" everywhere. One being 100 miles from mainland china versus 200 miles makes no difference to US in the 21st century. A shipping lane maybe? Also not US problem really, got plenty of those too.

Well, for one, we don't want a humanitarian crisis and civil war or even international war... that's bad for the whole region and thus bad for US interests. We also don't want China able to just take over land and territory at will, which they've threatened to do all over the region. That destabilizes the region and once again is bad for US interests. This also emboldens other nations with expansion desires which thr…

There are 190 other countries that applies to so where are they?

I don't share the ego for the US' hegemony or I also don't place importance on the US' soft power. I do care about semiconductors though.

Is there a stronger argument, because I'm still stuck on what specific strategic advantage that Taiwan has to the US, after we duplicate their one interesting company's infrastructure.

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

#498

Post by kragen »

emn13 wrote: post #270
raisedbyninjas wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

The incentives to use renewables are there... where the costs of fossil sources are high, and where the energy consuming process will be reliably profitable long enough to pay for all those renewable energy sources. That last bit makes me doubt this would push renewables - who trusts that mining will remain profitable for years or even a decade? In other words, it may well incentivize energy sources with low down-pay…

The high bit here is that coin mining is not 1 TW; it's 0.012 TW, so the overall effect is almost insignificant. But it's still interesting to know which direction the incentives run.

The cost of fossil-fuel electricity generation is about half capex and half opex (including fuel), and in much of the world, solar is now cheaper than either fossil-fuel capex or fossil-fuel opex. A large part of capex is machinery, much of which is so costly that shipping costs are insignificant, so the costs are the same anywhere in the world.

Bitcoin isn't mined with GPUs, but your comments about intermittency and capital costs apply a fortiori to ASIC mining.

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

#499

Post by bcrl »

acchow wrote: post #469
mensetmanusman wrote: post #453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Venor Vinge's The Children of the Sky is hard sci-fi touches on this issue of how to bootstrap a civilization to the point where the technology necessary to restore a highly advanced spaceship becomes available. Humanity will need this skill if we are ever able to venture out of our solar system.

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

#500

Post by spfzero »

HeyLaughingBoy wrote: post #377
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…

> by the time they finish the changes, the part they redesigned for is also out of stock One of the things my last employer did to get around availability problems was to buy a vendor's entire supply of a chip we could use and then redesigning the product to use it. IIRC, the supply was projected to be enough to last a year. Hopefully, a year from now it will have proven to be a good decision :-) It's crazy out there…

Similarly, my company just redesigned a product after running out of an IC that's been on order for many months, still without an estimate on delivery by the distributor.

We redesigned it to use another chip we had in-house, intended for another product, but that product sells for much less and is in less demand, so...

We initially thought we could move pins around in firmware, and the parts have the same footprint, so it seemed possible, but they were different enough that we had to rev the PCB. Now we're waiting for PCBs and crossing our fingers that they will test out.

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