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A big hurdle to fixing the chip shortage: substrates

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Re: A big hurdle to fixing the chip shortage: substrates

#101

Post by Taniwha »

mulmen wrote: post #97
throwaway210222 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We use United States Customary Units Actually no, not for potential difference, current, resistance, impedance, luminosity, amount-ofsubstance … For those you use the SI units. Its just length, mass, (plus force and torque). Not far to go.

The United States does not use "Imperial" units. We use some Customary Units that are defined in terms of SI units and share names with some Imperial units. The point is that saying "The United States uses Imperial Units" is, generously, ignorant.

yes - for example a US fluid Oz is different from everywhere else, as is a cup, a pint, a Venti (twenty what?) and many of the units used in cooking - using American recipes without translation can produce crap - Imperial fluid ounces are totally different largely due tax politics of the 1700/1800s

Re: A big hurdle to fixing the chip shortage: substrates

#102

Post by cxr »

cptskippy wrote: post #47
usui wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you might have missed that I already stated that it's an irrational thing to complain about because units in nature are arbitrary, but given that no one uses these units for the topic at hand, why use them at all? Just for relatability? > It may as well be in hectares or "multiples of some lake somewhere", it's a massive number. We're saying the same thing but arguing for the opposite. Like I said, no one in…

> I'm not trying to make fun of Americans, I'm trying to understand what the extra efort is worth for? Quit being dishonest. You're not trying to understand because it's really fucking easy to understand. If you really truly want an answer, it's relatablity. If you ask the vast majority of Americans how many centimeters are in a foot, you'll get blank stares. If you ask them how long 30 centimeters are you'll get bla…

> If you ask the vast majority of Americans how many centimeters are in a foot, you'll get blank stares. If you ask them how long 30 centimeters are you'll get blank stares.

The conventions of dealing mainly in centimeters and meters when discussing dimensions of human scale items could use fixing.

A simple solution is to promulgate the use of the "metric hand" (or just "hand" for short). 1 hand = 1 decimeter = 10 centimeters; about the width of a human hand. The decimeter has the nice property that it's approximately 4 inches, so there are roughly 3 hands in a foot—similar conversion conversion factor as going from feet to yards. Nice! Error accumulates at only 1.6mm (exactly 1.6mm) per hand.

(Equestrian sports already has a "hand" unit. Conveniently, it's defined as 4 inches, and its use is pretty much confined to those circles. There's not much need to distinguish between the two, therefore, but if ever a need arises, we can clarify whether we're talking about "metric hands" or "horse hands".)

Re: A big hurdle to fixing the chip shortage: substrates

#104

Post by blacktriangle »

Has anybody ever considered that better software may be a part of the solution to the chip shortage? Going back to actually caring about things like efficiency and using the hardware properly instead of living in layers of software abstraction miles high? We put men on the moon with chips that could probably be manufactured in somebody's basement. We easily fulfill society's NEEDs with that level of hardware, we just need to give up streaming gigs of Netflix through our Electron apps to make it happen.

Re: A big hurdle to fixing the chip shortage: substrates

#105

Post by sandworm101 »

genewitch wrote: post #27
usui wrote: post #24

Lol every time I see the word "feet" I'm reminded that this article isn't targeted to anyone but Americans, even when talking about manufacturing lines in Asia. My East Asian bias is showing but in all my experience I absolutely have never had to use those units in a serious professional context. Any time I see a technically-sounding article use units like "feet" and "football fields" I subconsciously find it very di…

The difference between 185 million ft^2 and whatever you pick doesn't matter. It may as well be in hectares or "multiples of some lake somewhere", it's a massive number. You have, and are probably using right now, a voice controlled computer that can convert anything to anything else, by just asking. Is it really worth typing this every time an American site uses American language? We all get it, Americans with their…

"185 million ft^2" and "185 million square feet" are two radically different numbers. One is a square 35 thousand miles on each side. The other is a square 2.6 miles each side.

Re: A big hurdle to fixing the chip shortage: substrates

#106

Post by HPsquared »

hfktktnfkgk wrote: post #63
lovich wrote: post #34

>Now major chip companies are resorting to unusual tactics. They are placing orders far in advance and prepaying so that substrate companies have ample cash to build more factories. Some are committing to buying the entire supply of new production lines to give their suppliers confidence to invest. If the chip makers are investing this much money into the substrate businesses, why aren't they just purchasing some of…

The chip companies also know that they will definitely buy electricity in the future, yet they are not buying power plants. In a sense, buying the future substrate production is just a future substrate contract. Do you know how building a power plant is financed today? Basically someone buys 10 years of gas futures, sells 10 years of equivalent electricity futures, and uses the profit (since electricity is more expen…

I suppose they could also just sell the electricity futures first, then build the plant, then buy gas as needed. That'd put them at risk of gas prices fluctuating though, might turn off investors.

I assume a random person can't just sell 10 years of electricity futures without some kind of collateral.

Re: A big hurdle to fixing the chip shortage: substrates

#107

Post by bruce343434 »

sandworm101 wrote: post #105
genewitch wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference between 185 million ft^2 and whatever you pick doesn't matter. It may as well be in hectares or "multiples of some lake somewhere", it's a massive number. You have, and are probably using right now, a voice controlled computer that can convert anything to anything else, by just asking. Is it really worth typing this every time an American site uses American language? We all get it, Americans with their…

"185 million ft^2" and "185 million square feet" are two radically different numbers. One is a square 35 thousand miles on each side. The other is a square 2.6 miles each side.

You're thinking of a "(185 million feet) square"

Re: A big hurdle to fixing the chip shortage: substrates

#108

Post by CivBase »

usui wrote: post #24

Lol every time I see the word "feet" I'm reminded that this article isn't targeted to anyone but Americans, even when talking about manufacturing lines in Asia. My East Asian bias is showing but in all my experience I absolutely have never had to use those units in a serious professional context. Any time I see a technically-sounding article use units like "feet" and "football fields" I subconsciously find it very di…

Well, it is the Wall Street Journal. It shouldn't come as a surprise that an American publication named after an American landmark uses American units.

Americans, myself included, generally acknowledge that the metric system is better but we are already familiar with US units. There's nothing really wrong with US units either in terms of accurate measurement. In an ideal world we would use metric, but transitioning would come at monumental costs - never mind the re-training of an entire population - just so we can make unit conversions a tiny bit easier.

I get it. You're not familiar with US units like we are so you have to do conversions to make sense of the measurements - probably with a calculator since the ratios aren't simple, whole numbers. But remember Americans have to do the same whenever we read almost any foreign publication. Difference is I never see HN or Reddit comments complaining about metric units.

Re: A big hurdle to fixing the chip shortage: substrates

#109

Post by CRConrad »

mulmen wrote: post #94
genewitch wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference between 185 million ft^2 and whatever you pick doesn't matter. It may as well be in hectares or "multiples of some lake somewhere", it's a massive number. You have, and are probably using right now, a voice controlled computer that can convert anything to anything else, by just asking. Is it really worth typing this every time an American site uses American language? We all get it, Americans with their…

> We all get it, Americans with their imperial units, ha ha. It's really very tired. Americans don't even use Imperial units. We use United States Customary Units [1] which are more like siblings to Imperial units than offspring. United States customary units have been based on familiar Metric units since the Mendenhall Order in 1893 . School children in the United States have studied the metric system for generation…

> United States customary units have been based on familiar Metric units since the Mendenhall Order in 1893.

No. They may be defined in terms of Metric units, but they aren't "based on" them. If they were based on them, they'd be a sensible integer (or decimal-factor) multiple of them, not some weird fractional measure. An inch being 25.4 millimeters may be the current definition of an inch, but that arbitrary length isn't based on anything in the metric world -- it's still just as based on the average length of the top joint of a medieval craftsman's thumb as it's always been.

Re: A big hurdle to fixing the chip shortage: substrates

#110

Post by CRConrad »

cptskippy wrote: post #75
OJFord wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A football field or soccer field is a perfectly reasonable unit of measure when you're simply trying to convey "a lot" to someone. At least in the UK it's somewhat of a 'meme', a byword for a tabloid, in the same league as irrelevant mentions of age and house price, etc.

We measure trunk space in terms of bodies it can hold. It's funny and clearly relates the capacity.

We do? Depends on who "we" is, I suppose...

I've seen golf bags mentioned quite often. But, come to think of it, that's about equivalent to a body, isn't it?

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