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Intel and the $1.5T chip industry meltdown

economist.com

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Re: Intel and the $1.5T chip industry meltdown

#21

Post by Nursie »

machinekob wrote: post #15

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).

You can still get a 4090 in Western Australia! They’ve marked remaining stock up a bit, but there was no first-day sellout here.

I think demand is considerably lower for these than it was two years ago, but nvidia is managing supply to some extent.

Re: Intel and the $1.5T chip industry meltdown

#22

Post by Isinlor »

China already declared that it will use force in Taiwan if "possibilities for a peaceful reunification should be completely exhausted".

From Chinese Anti-Secession Law:

Article 8: In the event that the "Taiwan independence" secessionist forces should act under any name or by any means to cause the fact of Taiwan's secession from China, or that major incidents entailing Taiwan's secession from China should occur, or that possibilities for a peaceful reunification should be completely exhausted, the state shall employ non-peaceful means and other necessary measures to protect China's sovereignty and territorial integrity.

https://www.europarl.europa.eu/meetdocs/2004_2009/documents/...

It is USA/EU strategic interest to avoid too deep dependency on Taiwan. We should support the status quo there as people of Taiwan are prosperous and peaceful nation. But we can't be caught off guard by China as EU was caught off guard by Russia.

Re: Intel and the $1.5T chip industry meltdown

#23

Post by swores »

moffkalast wrote: post #18
habibur wrote: post #13

Wondering if that means Raspberry Pi will be available again. Still no sign of stability in supply.

https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/production-and-supply-chain... 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…

> It's quite apparent that there's little demand for the Pico, since it's always in stock.

Without additional context (which perhaps you have and used subconsciously) that's not evidence that there's less demand - just evidence that the ratio of demand to stock is lowest. It could be that it has 2x the demand but they prioritised it and produced 3x as much stock, or it could be that a specific component makes one product easier/less delayed than the other to make (in which case equal demand could still lead to only one being regularly in stock).

If for example 100 people a year want to buy a product $A, and 10 a year want to buy product $B, and the company manufactures 200 $A's a year but only 5 $B's, then $B will be out of stock more despite being far less popular.

Or course this partly relates to how well a company predicts future demand when deciding how much of each product to create. But in many cases (though I would guess not when it comes to The Raspberry Pi Foundation) marketing therefore also becomes a factor - in that companies may see value in either creating slightly less than they expect there to be demand for, or artificially limiting / lying about stock levels, in order to get people thinking "wow it's out of stock so it must be popular!"

Re: Intel and the $1.5T chip industry meltdown

#24

Post by mschuster91 »

jtorsella wrote: post #8
senttoschool wrote: post #3

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.

I really don’t understand this. Chips are tangible goods, not services where, for example, a bunch of hospitality capacity went to waste during the pandemic. Any “extra” chips will go to use, and will only serve to reduce costs for firms and consumers purchasing them, expand the range of products it makes sense to put chips in and the speed and quality of chips companies can afford to build on. While market signals a…

> Chips are tangible goods

Many chips are not fungible, at least not for large-volume orders that incorporate stuff like customer specific mask ROMs or optimizations, and certainly for built-to-order stuff like Apple's SoCs. That means that let's say Apple can't just go and take a bunch of NVIDIA's chips and slap them into their products, and I'd even take a bet and say that manufacturers of NVIDIA cards can't easily take up cancelled order capacity for the same NVIDIA chip from other manufacturers.

Re: Intel and the $1.5T chip industry meltdown

#25

Post by Swenrekcah »

bsenftner wrote: post #16

With the Skyscraper tall wall of facts that article is composed, one would think such writing would have an index of references. But nope, what The Economists publishes sounds factual but is barely a nudge above laundry room gossip with a complete lack of references, lack of accountability for that wall of facts . It is truly amazing how manipulated our official discourse is on these critical issues. How to know what…

Why do you say that? Almost every paragraph contains numerous references to either industry reports, sales numbers and market shares, various company projections past and present, relevant global events, laws passed or government statements, market performance and whatnot.

They aren't enumerated and listed at the end sure, but they're there.

Re: Intel and the $1.5T chip industry meltdown

#26

Post by mensetmanusman »

Highly recommend the economist’s podcast on Xi called ‘The Prince’

Xi became a Leninist and is trying to be the next Mao. He is a true believer that his glory and the glory of China can only happen by taking back Taiwan.

TSMC is a huge reason for this conflict. The current US policy is trying to slow China’s technological might for that next war.

Re: Intel and the $1.5T chip industry meltdown

#27

Post by vaxman »

habibur wrote: post #13

Wondering if that means Raspberry Pi will be available again. Still no sign of stability in supply.

Eben says to embrace the Pico and buy the rPi400 because it does not compete with orders from industrial customers (that spent bazillions on testing/certification of their rPi4/rPi3-derived products and therefore receive some priority above the poor huddled masses yearning to breath free air). If you aren't down with Pico yet, I recommend googling Limor Fried and searching her company's site.

As far as Intel goes, they've been on oxygen for decades with the technological advancements they appropriated from DEC, while at the same time selling off the DEC-designed StrongARM technology and exploring new ways to generate heat and waste power. At this point, they have a formal relationship with TSMC and a government mandate to turn the Rust Belt into the Silicon Belt, so don't count them out (unless you are 75 or something, because it will be 10-15 years for all of that to happen), but to guys like me (and I would imagine most people on a site like this), they're about as relevant now as IBM (/s) In the meantime, we need to convince Apple to sell its consumer chipsets, maybe with an incentive from USA (either money or an agreement not to prosecute them for investing so much training and capital in China that they feel comfortable announcing their plan on TV yesterday to murder as many people as necessary to return Taiwan to 1895 legal structure).

Re: Intel and the $1.5T chip industry meltdown

#28

Post by gonzo41 »

mensetmanusman wrote: post #26

Highly recommend the economist’s podcast on Xi called ‘The Prince’ Xi became a Leninist and is trying to be the next Mao. He is a true believer that his glory and the glory of China can only happen by taking back Taiwan. TSMC is a huge reason for this conflict. The current US policy is trying to slow China’s technological might for that next war.

It's also setting up the conditions for the US and the West to leave Taiwan to fight it's own fight like Ukraine.

Re: Intel and the $1.5T chip industry meltdown

#29

Post by hikingsimulator »

bfung wrote: post #14
senttoschool wrote: post #3

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.

There’s gov intervention now, not due to shortage nor Covid related supply, but strategic moves that’s happening between US and China. 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…

You mention AI applications in Ukraine. Can you provide more information on that? Sounds like a rabbit hole.

Re: Intel and the $1.5T chip industry meltdown

#30

Post by xattt »

Swenrekcah wrote: post #25
bsenftner wrote: post #16

With the Skyscraper tall wall of facts that article is composed, one would think such writing would have an index of references. But nope, what The Economists publishes sounds factual but is barely a nudge above laundry room gossip with a complete lack of references, lack of accountability for that wall of facts . It is truly amazing how manipulated our official discourse is on these critical issues. How to know what…

Why do you say that? Almost every paragraph contains numerous references to either industry reports, sales numbers and market shares, various company projections past and present, relevant global events, laws passed or government statements, market performance and whatnot. They aren't enumerated and listed at the end sure, but they're there.

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