Earlier quoted context omitted.
Houses too …
houses need to reverse decades
The last few years in particular have seen a dramatic rise in housing prices[1]. Reversing even a few years would dramatically increase affordability for many people.
TSMC warns over deepening slump in chipmaking sector
41–50 of 139 posts
Re: TSMC warns over deepening slump in chipmaking sector
#42TSMC just warned the world of a 10% decline in chip revenues. Given that chips today are critical component of every phone, TV, laptop, desktop PC, server, vehicle, dishwasher, and pretty much everything else , TSMC's warning suggests we're going to experience a significant global economic contraction soon. Hopefully I'm wrong.
I don't think that's true. If my BOM costs go down by 10%, I don't need to charge any less money for my product. If Apple could build an iPhone for 1 cent, why wouldn't they still charge $1000 for it? They can say it's how much iOS costs or whatever. (And hey, use the extra profit to hire more tax-paying iOS developers, making iOS even more valuable.)
Typically, lower demand means lower prices - at least in the short term. I believe that TSMC is saying that demand is decreasing quickly and a supply glut will need to clear until it gets better. Just my two cents.
Re: TSMC warns over deepening slump in chipmaking sector
#43TSMC just warned the world of a 10% decline in chip revenues. Given that chips today are critical component of every phone, TV, laptop, desktop PC, server, vehicle, dishwasher, and pretty much everything else , TSMC's warning suggests we're going to experience a significant global economic contraction soon. Hopefully I'm wrong.
> Given that [...] we're going to experience a significant global economic contraction soon.
What's with all the doomslinging in modern discourse? No, no, that's not now it works at all. There was a chip shortage just a year ago! Did that plunge us into recession? No, clearly it didn't. Then it was Inflation that was going to kill us all. And it didn't either. Now all of a sudden we're swinging the other way with chips and have a glut, and... now the doom will happen, I guess you're hoping?
No. This is a cyclic industry and it's cycling like it always has. A 10% YoY revenue drop isn't anything weird. I found a chart here: look at the bottom YoY numbers and see all the times they were in the red. Remember the unmitigated economic disaster of 2016? Me neither.
https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/TSM/taiwan-semicon...
Re: TSMC warns over deepening slump in chipmaking sector
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
Real talk: ever since I put Windows and Linux on separate SSDs, rather than simply separate partitions, they haven't killed each others' bootloaders once . Best $100 I ever spent. My second tip for solving incompetent software with redundant hardware: TOSLink -> 1Mii Bluetooth Transmitter to avoid the catastrophic linux bluetooth stack. It's brilliant. TOSLink = no buzzing from inadequate shielding next to digital li…
Any specifics about the second paragraph anecdote? It seems like a serious scandal.
Hmm doesn't look like I wrote it in my journal but yeah, it was pretty gross. The reason given for the ban was some swearing in the message, but to my intuition the profanity was pretty tame, well-deserved, and ultimately just an excuse.
I do remember the bug: Bose headphones have a low quality mode and a high quality mode (low quality frees bandwidth for microphone and maybe latency), and the linux bluetooth stack defaulted to the low bandwidth mode so aggressively that even if you changed the script to set high bandwidth mode it would immediately set back.
I have no idea if the bug is fixed because this happened in 2020 and I haven't thought about desktop bluetooth since 2020 because TOSLink->1Mii Bluetooth Transmitter solved all my problems with it.
Re: TSMC warns over deepening slump in chipmaking sector
#45TSMC just warned the world of a 10% decline in chip revenues. Given that chips today are critical component of every phone, TV, laptop, desktop PC, server, vehicle, dishwasher, and pretty much everything else , TSMC's warning suggests we're going to experience a significant global economic contraction soon. Hopefully I'm wrong.
> Given that [...] we're going to experience a significant global economic contraction soon. What's with all the doomslinging in modern discourse? No, no, that's not now it works at all. There was a chip shortage just a year ago! Did that plunge us into recession? No, clearly it didn't. Then it was Inflation that was going to kill us all. And it didn't either. Now all of a sudden we're swinging the other way with chi…
At this point I just stopped listening to pretty much anyone regarding the economy. It has become plain as day to me that the whole field is kaput and that no one can really predict anything in this incredibly complex, multivariate chaotic system.
Re: TSMC warns over deepening slump in chipmaking sector
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
Have you used any of these sub $100 devices? I just took a look, and all of the names are vendors I have no experience with what so ever. All of the vendors I am familiar are above that price point. So, my immediate concern would be these cheap ones are made from chips rejected by the name brands, and their performance would be rejected by me after wasting the time/money on them. I was looking at NewEgg and not Aliba…
Lots of https://slickdeals.net/newsearch.php?q=2tb&searcharea=deals&...
> Intel
Note: Intel is literally obsolete in terms of Flash. Intel sold all of their SSDs to SK Hynix, who is now selling those SSD-designs under the name of "Solidigm"
So if you want a "modern Intel" SSD, look for Solidigm. Intel got out of this race in December 2021, so no "new" SSD (2022 or 2023 era) is from "Intel" branding, only "Solidigm".
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I'm more of a Crucial / Micron fan myself, but Samsung, Crucial, and WD (aka: Sandisk was bought out by WD) are all 2TB for under $100.
But yes, I'm talking about the big-names, with high-performance (7000MBps+ suitable for PS5). The good stuff. GPUs, CPUs, HDDs, and Motherboards have also come down in price. Its entirely across the board though the SSD market is where its most obvious.
Re: TSMC warns over deepening slump in chipmaking sector
#47This boom/bust is really obvious with regards to computer prices. I'm seeing 2TB NVMe PCIe 4.0 SSDs with 7000+ MBps under $100 these days. Almost everything in the computer-world is on a significant sale.
Have you used any of these sub $100 devices? I just took a look, and all of the names are vendors I have no experience with what so ever. All of the vendors I am familiar are above that price point. So, my immediate concern would be these cheap ones are made from chips rejected by the name brands, and their performance would be rejected by me after wasting the time/money on them. I was looking at NewEgg and not Aliba…
A 2TB Western Digital SN850x, a near top of the line SSD, is $99 at Best Buy.
https://www.bestbuy.com/site/wd-black-sn850x-2tb-internal-ss...
Re: TSMC warns over deepening slump in chipmaking sector
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think that's true. If my BOM costs go down by 10%, I don't need to charge any less money for my product. If Apple could build an iPhone for 1 cent, why wouldn't they still charge $1000 for it? They can say it's how much iOS costs or whatever. (And hey, use the extra profit to hire more tax-paying iOS developers, making iOS even more valuable.)
> If Apple could build an iPhone for 1 cent, why wouldn't they still charge $1000 for it? Cause in healthy capitalism, a competitor could step in and sell it for $999 and Apple would lose market share quickly.
> Cause in healthy capitalism, a competitor could step in and sell it for $999 and Apple would lose market share quickly.
No they can't. You're neglecting the various moats that an entity like Apple enjoys with the iPhone.
First you have to be able to actually build a similar or superior product. You can't do it. Elite of elite tech engineering companies like Samsung can just barely keep up generation after generation. The investment required to build your $999 competing phone is comically enormous. You won't even be able to get access to enough chips to do it, much less have the manufacturing capacity to deliver at any meaningful scale given the components.
Do you have tens of billions of USD in cash ready?
You need to build a brand that consumers desire, such that they'll even want to spend $899 or $999 instead of picking up the iPhone at $1000.
Do you have another block of tens of billions of USD in cash ready, for marketing, brand building, advertising?
You need an extraordinary logistics system globally.
Do you have another block of tens of billions of USD in cash ready to build, deploy, refine your global logistics network?
Apple has ~$114 billion in annual operating income, most of it (including its ecosystem) is riding on the back of the iPhone. If it could be done, somebody would take that giant pot of gold from them. Even if a competitor could take 1/4 or 1/2 of that pot of gold, they'd move on it in a heartbeat. They can't do it, not even remotely close.
And then time. It'll take you a decade to get there, absolute best case scenario.
What Apple is reaping, is decades in the making, and required hundreds of billions of dollars in capital to be deployed over that span of time. Good luck.
Re: TSMC warns over deepening slump in chipmaking sector
#49TSMC just warned the world of a 10% decline in chip revenues. Given that chips today are critical component of every phone, TV, laptop, desktop PC, server, vehicle, dishwasher, and pretty much everything else , TSMC's warning suggests we're going to experience a significant global economic contraction soon. Hopefully I'm wrong.
This isn't necessarily representative of the economics of downstream sectors, because it's probably caused by the Bullwhip Effect[1] like the recent semiconductor shortage. "The bullwhip effect refers to a scenario in which small changes in demand at the retail end of the supply chain become amplified when moving up the supply chain from the retail end to the manufacturing end." [1] https://www.investopedia.com/bullw…
That would imply there is a surplus somewhere, which there's not. There's a reduction in orders from a reduction in demand regardless of the state of the buffer.
Re: TSMC warns over deepening slump in chipmaking sector
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
Real talk: ever since I put Windows and Linux on separate SSDs, rather than simply separate partitions, they haven't killed each others' bootloaders once . Best $100 I ever spent. My second tip for solving incompetent software with redundant hardware: TOSLink -> 1Mii Bluetooth Transmitter to avoid the catastrophic linux bluetooth stack. It's brilliant. TOSLink = no buzzing from inadequate shielding next to digital li…
I have windows on a separate SSD, and grub still stops working whenever I update my motherboard firmware...
Condolences. I wish I had a second trick for you but I don't.