11–20 of 734 posts
A few months ago, I posted that here that governments around the world should not interfere with the chip industry just because of the covid-induced shortages. The reason is that supply and demand will naturally sort things out and that any government handout to chip companies to increase capacity will be wasted because chip demand will swing the other way. The chip industry is now swinging the other way.
A few months ago, I posted that here that governments around the world should not interfere with the chip industry just because of the covid-induced shortages. The reason is that supply and demand will naturally sort things out and that any government handout to chip companies to increase capacity will be wasted because chip demand will swing the other way. The chip industry is now swinging the other way.
The rise of TSMC has somewhat increased the national security risk as the market share has shifted away from Intel. We are seeing with the Ukraine War, a reliable domestic supply of semiconductors is now critical to national security.
I expect Intel will continue to be helped along by the US government for some time.
Still no sign of stability in supply.
A few months ago, I posted that here that governments around the world should not interfere with the chip industry just because of the covid-induced shortages. The reason is that supply and demand will naturally sort things out and that any government handout to chip companies to increase capacity will be wasted because chip demand will swing the other way. The chip industry is now swinging the other way.
With China having “seized” Hong Kong, and Russia invading Ukraine, flags went up signaling that the next major move in the future could be China invading Taiwan. And Taiwan is where the most advanced chips are made.
In parallel news, playing with the open source AI models, it’s clear that GPUs are NEEDED in order to run these AI models. Ex: an Nvidia RTX3090 (low end of A100) can run Stable Diffusion in a couple minutes, while my 2013 MacBook Pro, cpu driven, takes ~4hrs to perform the same task.
AI models applied to military uses is a game changer, as demonstrated by Ukraine equipped with US tech.
Mitigating the risk of losing Taiwan, enabling production on US shore, and banning sales to China [1] would keep the economic and military advantage on the US side a bit longer than if things kept going the way they were.
Chips might slump now, but GPUs are gonna be in hot demand, even w/o the blockchain use cases. As demonstrated by the open source AI models, we’re about to replace a lot of stock photos, news illustrations, logo services… and that’s just the beginning.
[1] https://www.bis.doc.gov/index.php/documents/about-bis/newsro...
China ban => lower demand from CCP
nvidia RTX 4090 still out of stock in most places :|
I'm pretty sure datacenter and military chip usage will grow in next few years even if recession hit consumer market even harder then past year then US chipmakers will get fat checks just 2be prepared for China retaliation (probably feels good to be Intel in chip war time).
A few months ago, I posted that here that governments around the world should not interfere with the chip industry just because of the covid-induced shortages. The reason is that supply and demand will naturally sort things out and that any government handout to chip companies to increase capacity will be wasted because chip demand will swing the other way. The chip industry is now swinging the other way.
As far as I understand, the primary reason for these investments is not to address the shortages, but to decouple Western nations from their reliance on Taiwanese silicon. Most of the remaining shortages - which are still happening in many industries, eg. heat pump shortages in Europe are mostly blocked by chip supply - are caused by the production backlog of the older/cheaper/different technologies. So the goal is p…
Samsung was making Apple's A's in Austin, Texas some time ago, but Apple ditched Samsung's US manufacturing in favor of their China/Taiwan-first offshore outsourcing strategy.
Wondering if that means Raspberry Pi will be available again. Still no sign of stability in supply.
That's from April, but in short there's a huge order backlog that they're still working through apparently, despite producing half a million units per month. With the lockdown gap in production and the Pi 4s getting increasingly integrated into various 3rd party products I suppose that's no surprise.
It's quite apparent that there's little demand for the Pico, since it's always in stock.
tl:dr Global recession => lower chip demand for consumers China ban => lower demand from CCP nvidia RTX 4090 still out of stock in most places :| I'm pretty sure datacenter and military chip usage will grow in next few years even if recession hit consumer market even harder then past year then US chipmakers will get fat checks just 2be prepared for China retaliation (probably feels good to be Intel in chip war time).
Global recession is to blame for everything. I'm waiting for some years for payable video card, nothing special, but i guess Global recession is to blame. /s
Earlier quoted context omitted.
As far as I understand, the primary reason for these investments is not to address the shortages, but to decouple Western nations from their reliance on Taiwanese silicon. Most of the remaining shortages - which are still happening in many industries, eg. heat pump shortages in Europe are mostly blocked by chip supply - are caused by the production backlog of the older/cheaper/different technologies. So the goal is p…
Well, the foundry business is now a two-horse race between Samsung and TSMC. Intel, many believe won't make it. The US gov't knows it too -- that's why Trump arm-twisted TSMC to open new plants in Arizona. Samsung was making Apple's A's in Austin, Texas some time ago, but Apple ditched Samsung's US manufacturing in favor of their China/Taiwan-first offshore outsourcing strategy.
Apple runs an Asia-first strategy these days, they are divesting from China at top speed (whether that's due to sanction threats, the risk of operating in dictatorships, raising wages in China or a combination of that is up for debate). It doesn't make much sense for Apple economically and logistically to use US-made products as they have to be shipped across the ocean to the assembly plants.