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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

#571

Post by OldHand2018 »

jbay808 wrote: post #510
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.

It seems to me that if you can make a product of a given quality very cheaply, that probably indicates that you're very good at making it. The fact that I can't get competitive production quotes in the USA for most products, like electric motors, injection molded plastic parts, printed circuit boards, stamped metal parts, castings, etc, suggests that the US is also not particularly efficient at making those parts. Th…

The price quotes you are getting also include the opportunity costs of saying no to other people wanting to pay for that manufacturing capacity.

The people I know that are running manufacturing aren’t exactly hurting for business. Now is just not the time to lock in high quantities of low-cost stuff.

This article is about TSMC raising prices for what little capacity they have unallocated. We can all agree that they are probably the best in the world at what they do, yet there is no way you will get “competitive production quotes” from them for commodity chips. Jim Bob’s Plastic and Stuff out in Fort Wayne is no different. Now, Jim Bob is probably going to cut you a deal way sooner than TSMC is, but I know of a certain mega-big car company that shut down an engine plant for a week because Jim Bob said last years prices aren’t this years prices - and you probably aren’t as big as mega-big car company.

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

#572

Post by pertymcpert »

vmception wrote: post #497
Rafuino wrote: post #473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Why do those other countries matter here? We’re talking about the US, the worlds joint number one superpower.

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

#573

Post by photojosh »

spfzero wrote: post #500
HeyLaughingBoy wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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,…

Um, I just did the same thing the GP did (buy up all the stock) for a product in development but one of our older products is getting hit by the same issue described by the parent!

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

#574

Post by vmception »

pertymcpert wrote: post #572
vmception wrote: post #497

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Why do those other countries matter here? We’re talking about the US, the worlds joint number one superpower.

Its obvious that isn’t important to me, right? This sentiment crosses party lines.

We uniquely have the resources to be the most developed nation, domestically, but subsidize other countries’ defense instead and they subsidize other advances in their own country that we domestically deem too expensive.

So how about we get this semiconductor geopolitical nightmare out of the way and use our massive domestic resources the way we can. There are consequences, not the US’ problem.

There are a lot of people thinking like me, so hawkish people will need more articulate arguments for specific US foreign policy with specific countries.

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

#575

Post by manwe150 »

kragen wrote: post #508
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

That's because the rest of the world is no longer a bombed-out postwar wasteland or its near-enslaved colonies as it was in 01945. "Producing more than ever" is what you needed last year when you couldn't get N95 masks or ventilators, not "producing more than the rest of the world". But something went wrong and the masks and ventilators were not forthcoming, something that looks an awful lot like an absolute decline…

Other people said this above, but I will add my own anecdote I heard from a factory owner, that he had the ability to retool immediately back then to make medical masks, but between the uncertainty around whether people would keep buying them and at what cost, he was unsure it was worth the risk of switching away from a profitable business to something that would take less ability to make and less certain profits. I don’t know what he ended up choosing to do. But sounds like ‘not forthcoming’ is also possibly an indicator that skills, and the demand for them, is high—and not in decline.

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

#576

Post by kragen »

manwe150 wrote: post #575
kragen wrote: post #508

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's because the rest of the world is no longer a bombed-out postwar wasteland or its near-enslaved colonies as it was in 01945. "Producing more than ever" is what you needed last year when you couldn't get N95 masks or ventilators, not "producing more than the rest of the world". But something went wrong and the masks and ventilators were not forthcoming, something that looks an awful lot like an absolute decline…

Other people said this above, but I will add my own anecdote I heard from a factory owner, that he had the ability to retool immediately back then to make medical masks, but between the uncertainty around whether people would keep buying them and at what cost, he was unsure it was worth the risk of switching away from a profitable business to something that would take less ability to make and less certain profits. I…

Was this in the US? In both PRC and Taiwan the government guaranteed the profits of factories that retooled to make medical masks.

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

#577

Post by runeks »

jpm_sd wrote: post #521
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…

It's a nightmare. A broker in HK recently quoted me $71/ea for an industrial temp rated 10/100 Ethernet PHY (KSZ8081MNXIA) ... That is a roughly 50x markup. We're making a design change instead. I am now buying qty 500-1000 of any new part that is getting designed in, before the design is even started. Our Analog Devices sales rep told me to expect another 12-18 months of everything being completely fucked. That was…

> I am now buying qty 500-1000 of any new part that is getting designed in, before the design is even started.

I bet you’re not the only one doing that. No wonder there’s a shortage.

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

#578

Post by CryptoPunk »

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

Service economy doesn't imply deindustrialization. The provision of a service can be highly capital-intensive.

>>Now the US can't even make ventilators or face masks

The US led the world in the speed of its vaccination rollout. As for manufacturing, its world-leading biopharmaceutical infrastructure allowed it to produce the most shots of the most effective covid19 vaccines, of any country in the world.

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

#579

Post by CryptoPunk »

sennight wrote: post #461
minikites wrote: post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

All of the statistics on wage and per capita GDP growth contradict your claim..

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

#580

Post by sennight »

CryptoPunk wrote: post #579
sennight wrote: post #461

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

All of the statistics on wage and per capita GDP growth contradict your claim..

> > > So what happens when...

> > Answer for what happens when

> That hasn't happened yet!1!!

Time isn't that complicated a concept.

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