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

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

#551

Post by 11thEarlOfMar » Fri, Aug 27, 2021, 1:21 AM UTC

jpm_sd wrote: post #547

11thEarlOfMar wrote: post #540

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Be careful out there. We got burned by a scam broker in HK: - Establishes a physical address, might be an abandoned building. - Sets up a web site with full catalog of parts offered, many hard to find. Might be an actual defunct business they are fronting to look authentic. - Take orders, demand payment in advance. - Operate without shipping anything (they don't have any inventory) until the police start poking aroun…

Oh yeah, I've told my manager it's only a matter of time until we get burned. So far we have had decent luck with Heisener and Win-Source but prices keep climbing.

Well.. we were just looking at Heisener for a Cypress chip, but can't decide whether to pull the trigger. Have you placed an order and received the product from them?

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

#552

Post by tass » Fri, Aug 27, 2021, 1:22 AM UTC

paulmd wrote: post #526

tass wrote: post #503

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To add, this isn’t really “surplus” energy that’s being consumed. There are fossil burning power plants running only to produce PoW, and unless mining operations shut down to allow a generator to operate at minimum load, they are forcing shared generators to run and dams to drain.

you know that generator fuel consumption and dam water consumption is dependent on the load on the generator, right? it's not like a generator burns 2gal/hr no matter the load. This is easily observable even (perhaps especially) on home generators - if you run it idle it might run for 12 hours and if you load it to maximum capacity it might be out of fuel in 2 hours. look at a product page for a generator and will pr…

Yeah, we are agreeing on this point. Most of it is not surplus - more usage, more fuel used.

The only true surplus is if the water needed to flow anyway, or for something like nuclear power which has to stay active at some base load.

Even so, there’s more useful potential uses like desalinisation or carbon capture.

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

#553

Post by 11thEarlOfMar » Fri, Aug 27, 2021, 1:22 AM UTC

mrfusion wrote: post #550

11thEarlOfMar wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Concur. We are currently paying a chip broker $6.30 for an Infineon chip we typically buy by the 100,000s for $0.47. Cuz without them, our customers cannot sell their $10,000,000 product.

No problem paying six dollers then?

Nope.

How many you got?

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

#554

Post by toomanybeersies » Fri, Aug 27, 2021, 1:45 AM UTC

xnx wrote: post #519

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'…

I think Bitcoin is ridiculous and wasteful, but I'm also conflicted because I think similarly about many physical products: jewelry, mansions, oversized personal vehicles. There's a lot of embedded energy in all of those goods. Who am I to judge which ones are worthwhile. It all makes me dearly wish there was a global tax on taking the resources out of the ground.

At least all of those have reasonable lifespans and have high rates of recycling, can't say the same for mining rigs.

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

#555

Post by vmception » Fri, Aug 27, 2021, 1:52 AM UTC

randomopining wrote: post #549

kragen wrote: post #543

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The official name for the country is 中華民國, or in English, "Republic of China". Its national anthem is called 中華民國國歌. "Taiwan" 臺灣/台灣 is not found in the official name of the country. Sometimes it uses the name "Chinese Taipei" in international organizations.

They should just give up the name China, give up the claims to the mainland etc and just become Taiwan. Also, get nukes from the US and say that they will use first strike if they are threated by CCP.

I’ve heard that action alone triggers an advance from the CCP

More likely it triggers more lipservice but people havent been willing to risk it (nor has there been broad enough consensus in Taiwan to relinquish their own claims to the name and the mainland and the same other territorial expansionist policies that the CCP has, people seem to forget that)

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

#556

Post by galaxyLogic » Fri, Aug 27, 2021, 1:57 AM UTC

BizarroLand wrote: post #537

acchow wrote: post #469

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bootstrapping the second time is much easier

For instance, knowing that Corn doesn't supply absorbable niacin without nixtamalizaion, and diets dependent on corn tend to have large bouts of pellagra, is something that took hundreds of years to work out. Walking into a corn fed post-apocalyptic future knowing that soaking your corn in ash water and hulling it prevents pellagra and improves the viability of your group is some handy knowledge. This is also why reb…

I have the same experience in general programming. You start doing something but then you run into a dead end. Then you look for other routes to your destination and find them. If you do it the second time you can avoid those dead-ends, which you didn't even know about when you started.

I think this means we should keep log-books like ship-captains do so we can avoid treacherous waters on subsequent trips.

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

#557

Post by mrfusion » Fri, Aug 27, 2021, 2:00 AM UTC

_huayra_ wrote: post #289

akircher wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Work” doesn’t have to be wasteful. It could be based on the number of pieces of litter that were collected, the number of meals to the homeless that were served. It’s just easier to measure when work is something wasteful.

Let's hope someone comes up with a coin staked on the removal of CO2 from the atmosphere!

Remove too much and you wipe out all life on earth by starving plants.

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

#558

Post by fomine3 » Fri, Aug 27, 2021, 2:04 AM UTC

topspin wrote: post #265

laputan_machine wrote: post #24

My PC is 11 years old this year. I've been waiting to upgrade it for 2 years but held off because GPU prices are utterly ridiculous. I don't know who can afford these inflated prices, I was hoping things would settle but it doesn't appear to be the case.

"I was hoping things would settle but it doesn't appear to be the case." I've come to the conclusion that it's not going to 'settle' for a long time. Not until competition arrives from new foundries (several years out, although they _are_ being planned and built) and competition from Intel and their GPU platform appears and eventually becomes competitive. So your wait will be a couple years longer. Proof Of Stake wit…

There are many PoW coins other than ETH, but is those price keep high? I think why ETH price high is it's widely used and funtional.

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

#559

Post by elif » Fri, Aug 27, 2021, 2:17 AM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #427

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?

People do complain about excessive comforts too. It's one of the main complains those less well off make about those more well off. That said, there's a couple of differences between hot tubs and AC, and crypto mining: - Creature comforts don't consume the energy equivalent of a small developed country. - In what they do consume, most of the use is around basic human needs; excessive use happens rarely. - Most import…

- Creature comforts don't consume the energy equivalent of a small developed country.

you are incorrect here. 10% of global energy (not just electricity) is used for cooling.

I live in the deep south with no AC. "basic human needs; excessive use happens rarely." is extremely generous.

What you are describing is what makes you comfortable. I have no problem with that. be comfortable. Just consider that what you are describing is completely a matter of perspective and not some universal truth about use of energy. Just like you are not universally correct that every watt spent on crypto is "wasted". It's a perspective.... and my point here is to remind you to keep it in perspective of other trivial preferences people have, rather than turning it into an ideological war of good and evil.

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

#560

Post by HeyLaughingBoy » Fri, Aug 27, 2021, 2:26 AM UTC

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 there won't be "many ordinary workers" producing those toasters. Low margin products like that will have their manufacture automated to the n'th degree and they'll be built by "a handful of elite workers" supervising the automation.

Or, you know, they'll send it to the lowest-cost labor supplier they can find to build by hand and that won't be in the US!