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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

#421

Post by TillE »

babypuncher wrote: post #366
photon-torpedo wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prices for used GPUs are also inflated, though I think they have started to come down a bit. Once Ethereum moves to proof-of-stake (early 2022?) the market will probably get flooded with used GPUs.

I don't think proof-of-stake will actually work. Not because of any technical reasons, but because 95% of the people involved in crypto just see it as a free money printing machine. Once their hardware is no longer useful for mining, they will just move to some other proof-of-work crypto.

It's incredibly unfortunate that Bitcoin and similar proof-of-work currencies blew up and remained hot commodities. Because I do think that cryptocurrency is abstractly a very exciting idea, but the popular implementations are fundamentally abysmal.

If proof-of-stake works out, particularly as a currency people can actually use, then maybe nobody wants to buy Bitcoin anymore and the whole thing dries up as only speculators are left.

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

#422

Post by Tenoke »

Hjfrf wrote: post #383
Tenoke wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

BTC GPU mining hasn't been profitable for years. ETH GPU mining (the main one) has gotten way less profitable recently and is scheduled to not be a thing in 6 months to a year. The GPU demand for mining has already lessened in the last months and you can see decreased 2nd hand prices.. Every comment that blames BTC for chip shortages is likely largely incorrect and looking in the wrong place.

What do you think ASICs are made of?

TSMC has Bitmain as a low-priority client, and the first one to be cut when demand is high like earlier this year[0]. Bitmain itself is having even bigger reduction in orders to TSMC currently[1] so again, that's the wrong place to look for increased chip demand.

At any rate, I was mostly responding to claims about 'GPUs are profitable for mining' in the parent.

0. https://www.chinamoneynetwork.com/2021/03/05/tsmc-reportedly...

1. https://techtaiwan.com/20210628/bitcoin-mining-rig-bitmain-t...

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

#423

Post by rfd4sgmk8u »

bigfudge wrote: post #351
rfd4sgmk8u wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry you don't find it useful. I do find it useful, in fact millions more like me do. Usefulness is a subjective measurement. If you think we are crazy, that's OK. Bitcoin is opt-in. You can choose to ignore it, you can think its fucking useless, but in my opinion, you are wrong.

What problem is it solving for people? Especially people who are going to disproportionately suffer the impact of climate change (ie poor people)?

* Escaping inflationary fiat currencies * Avoiding capital controls * Avoiding financial censorship * Not growing poor slowly

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

#425

Post by jonathanpeterwu »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #32

Supply shortage is another way of saying demand excess. I don’t see much evidence that TSMC ever really slowed production, at least for their most advanced processes that are in high demand. This is yet another way we’re all forced to pay the price for cryptocurrency. As long as GPUs are profitable for mining, they will be purchased and put to work. The saddest part is that each additional GPU added to the mining net…

I highly doubt the chip shortage a la increased chip demand from a company perspective has to do with gaming/mining GPU demand.

Much of the supply demand can be traced to increased car chip demand (Toyota cutting production by 40%) as well as general device chip demand across many sectors.

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

#426

Post by gnramires »

elif wrote: post #379
formerly_proven wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Advocates will defend this by saying most energy usage is renewable. Even if true (iirc there is a lot of doubt whether it is, see Iran), it's still moronic, because consuming renewable energy for shits and giggles obviously means that other energy demands are being met with your usual energy mix instead of that renewable energy that went into shits and giggles as assumed. In terms of net emissions it simply doesn'…

I'm curious why we don't find a similar backlash to people who put their energy into a hot tub or to cool a 5x sized home.. as these cases don't even purportedly support a valuable economic mechanism. For instance. I don't cool my home with AC. does it bother you that I mine bitcoin overnight when the grid has surplus energy?

In the case of cryptocurrency, there is a clear better alternative that is Proof of Stake. It's caused by techological, economical and educational inertia. Cryptocurrency is driven by community consensus, and that's what we're doing here... discussing an outdated consensus (PoW supremacy) in the hope of changing it.

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

#427

Post by TeMPOraL »

elif wrote: post #379
formerly_proven wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Advocates will defend this by saying most energy usage is renewable. Even if true (iirc there is a lot of doubt whether it is, see Iran), it's still moronic, because consuming renewable energy for shits and giggles obviously means that other energy demands are being met with your usual energy mix instead of that renewable energy that went into shits and giggles as assumed. In terms of net emissions it simply doesn'…

I'm curious why we don't find a similar backlash to people who put their energy into a hot tub or to cool a 5x sized home.. as these cases don't even purportedly support a valuable economic mechanism. For instance. I don't cool my home with AC. does it bother you that I mine bitcoin overnight when the grid has surplus energy?

People do complain about excessive comforts too. It's one of the main complains those less well off make about those more well off.

That said, there's a couple of differences between hot tubs and AC, and crypto mining:

- Creature comforts don't consume the energy equivalent of a small developed country.

- In what they do consume, most of the use is around basic human needs; excessive use happens rarely.

- Most importantly, for almost[0] everything other than crypto, whether it's hot tubs or ACs or fiat banking system, energy use is considered waste to be minimized. Simply because energy is not free, the market is incentivized to reduce marginal energy consumption involved across the board[1]. In contrast, PoW considers waste a feature.

Cryptocurrencies are their own special thing - the perfect machine for consuming any surplus energy available. That's why they deserve their own special kind of backlash.

--

[0] - I can't really think of any thing other than PoW cryptocurrencies, where energy waste would be beneficial to the thing by design.

[1] - That, of course, doesn't mean we're using less energy overall - because both population and economic growth outpace efficiency improvements. But on the margin, it holds true.

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

#428

Post by bluGill »

p_j_w wrote: post #243
bluGill wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That depends on if someone else gets in. AMD or Intel could if they wanted to - without the expertise it will be hard, but a few expensive years of research and they can get back into it. Hire a few TMSC people. Or it could be someone completely new. The problem is hard, but solvable. TMSC does have incentive to keep prices low enough that that doesn't happen. They also have other incentives to treat good customers w…

>a few expensive years of research and they can get back into it. I haven't kept up much in the last couple of years, but back when I did, I was under the impression that AMD couldn't actually afford to do this. I know their condition has improved with the good fortunes of Zen, but is it enough that they could get back into semiconductor fabrication? I have no doubt Intel can afford to, though.

They don't have to go it alone.

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

#429

Post by naruvimama »

njovin wrote: post #288

Forgive the naive question but why doesn't the US government fund several foundries in the US immediately? $20B over 3 years is a drop in the bucket compared to a lot of military spending and these chip shortages surely have downstream impact on the defense industry, no? At this point I'd be much happier subsidizing chip manufacturing than most of the other ways this country spends money overseas.

It is one thing to build massive fabs it is quite another to run them profitably especially with China in the game, you are competing with a large pool of cheap R&D engineers and a captive market.

This was a mistake with 5G, where each country guarded their patent pool, R&D and failed to collaborate with strategic partners.

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

#430

Post by louloulou »

Salgat wrote: post #332
cletus wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with this but it's even worse than that. Estimates on Bitcoin energy usage put it at over 1TW now. I believe it was comparable to the energy consumption of Argentina. Advocates will defend this by saying most energy usage is renewable. This conjures the image of someone with a bunch of solar panels but the reality is that it's primarily hydro power because that's the cheapest. Thing is, in regions with cheap…

People need to remember that using up the available renewable energy on crypto just means there's less available for other consumers to use. The idea is to reduce electrical demand which makes it easier to shift towards 100% renewable. Adding all that electrical demand just keeps around non-renewable energy longer since few countries are able to go 100% renewable on their current demand.

I doesn't, at all. Energy production and energy distribution are entirely different things. There is enough unused (i.e. wasted) hydro power in Quebec to power the entire Bitcoin network. If energy is produced too far from where it is demanded such that transmission is prohibitively expensive, there is no downside to having highly mobile miners to make use of it. In fact the extra revenue generated can be used to subsidise the rest of the grid.
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