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Intel and the $1.5T chip industry meltdown

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Re: Intel and the $1.5T chip industry meltdown

#591

Post by kragen »

guntars wrote: post #571
kragen wrote: post #506

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it's amazing the number of people who believe that corporations exist in the same objective sense that puppies do, rather than the social-consensus sense that D&D characters do.

Imo the closest analog to a corporation is a program. It objectively exists like puppies do, but only when it's executed by the hardware, which are the people. Otherwise it's just a stack of documents without any real power to affect the reality. You can easily guess what the purpose of the program is.

Mathematical constructs like programs and theorems are a third category; they have structure and properties that don't depend purely on social construction the way a company's bylaws do. Of course which sets of axioms we prefer to reason from is socially negotiated, but once you've decided on a set of axioms, you don't have any freedom of choice about the consequences. This gives propositions about them a kind of objectivity that corporations or D&D characters lack. It can never be objectively true or false that a given corporation is, for example, bankrupt, but it can certainly be objectively true or false that a theorem is correct, or that a program performs an out-of-bounds array access when executed on the input "-0".

1500 years ago, Aryabhata came up with an algorithm for approximating an integer ratio with (what we today call) continued fractions, and we use it today for that and for inverting elements of finite fields. Aryabhata was a Hindu, speaking Sanskrit, living in a monarchy; no corporation he formed part of still exists, or could exist, at least according to accepted legal principles. Yet his algorithm continues to be correct today, and like the movement of the Earth, it would continue to be correct even if nobody believed it.

Platonists believe that mathematical constructs like programs are actually more objectively real than things like stones or puppies, because propositions about them have a truth-value that is independent not only of the speaker's social context but also of time. Today this puppy is alive; tomorrow she will be dead. The Pythagorean Theorem doesn't do that.

Re: Intel and the $1.5T chip industry meltdown

#592

Post by Const-me »

ewzimm wrote: post #451
nosianu wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We will give Ukraine to Russia if we can save Paris. Only that you just taught the already aggressive ruling elite of a huge country with an abundance of resources who don't care about anyone including their own except that they need them for work and for the fighting that threatening use of nukes gets them anything they want. Moldova next - it's not EU or NATO, already very low risk for Russia, if they can get the…

This is a good comment, but rather than tens of millions of new citizens, they would get tens of millions of new insurgents. Nearly the whole population of Ukraine is involved in the war effort in some way, and it would be impossible to break this completely. The only thing that could be given to Russia with the conquest of Ukraine is the option to turn into Afghanistan instead of North Korea.

In 1922 Russians have won the war against Ukrainian People's Republic. After 20 years, vast majority of Ukrainians who opposed the occupation were dead, scared to death, refugees in other countries, or in forced labor camps in Siberia and other remote places of USSR.

I'm afraid Russians have already started re-implementing elements of the same 100 years old strategy: https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/09/01/forcible-transfer-ukrain...

Re: Intel and the $1.5T chip industry meltdown

#593

Post by imroot »

valdiorn wrote: post #53

So, can someone explain to me why I can't get ANY chips for anything at all? Everything is out of stock that I use in my designs (Audio processing equipment). microprocessors, microcontrollers, ADCs, DACs, audio codecs, memory. Even bread and butter diodes were hard to source a few months ago. You name it, Mouser/Farnell/Digikey/the manufacturer doesn't have it. And if they do, it's priced at 500% MSRP. It may be "sw…

I'm a ham radio guy who builds his own radios and a time nut.

For some of the designs that I'm building for clubs and amateur rocket clubs, my chip prices have gone from $3 to $60/chip. I've been able to get by with the stock of chips that I keep for repairs, but, to find chips in the price points that I generally work with (and by price point, I mean, I donate these to clubs/college rocket clubs at no cost, so, I try to keep my costs as low as my sanity/bom/weight permits), I've been finding chips that have 1/4 of the ram or 1/4 the functionality that I need, and reworking my code around the new limitations of what I can build with.

Thank the EE gods that I can get boards from China in about 3-5 days at a relatively sane price point: add in an open source pick and place system (OpenPnP) and a easy-bake reflow oven (hacked together from a freebie on craigslist) and it allows me to iterate over designs about once every two weeks or so, as long as I've got everything in stock. I've had to change my boards for the SI4467 (Sub Ghz RF Transceiver from Silicon Labs) three or four times in the last year alone. I find something that works, build another one, I'm out of stock on an item with no availability in sight on DigiKey/Mouser, so, it's botch wiring and praying that I can get it to work the way I want to until I refab my PCB, and then rinse, repeat.

Re: Intel and the $1.5T chip industry meltdown

#594

Post by lmm »

hayst4ck wrote: post #422
rat87 wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Japan is not a vassal state. It's a powerful country that's an ally of the US.

Japan's constitution prohibits a traditional military as a result of surrender in WW2. Not having the right to solve your own disputes sounds like vassalization to me. From a face saving perspective "powerful ally country" is probably the status of every vassal state. From a de facto perspective they are not allowed to solve their own disputes and house military bases of a country that solves disputes (with the threa…

Vassals are required to pay tribute financially or (more importantly) militarily. Look at Belarus for an example of what that looks like (and the kind of foot-dragging you get when the vassal is unwilling).

Japan doesn't get involved in aggressive wars, but neither does e.g. Switzerland, and no-one would call them a vassal for it. Yes that restriction is currently constitutional in Japan, but Japan is free to amend that constitution without needing US approval.

Re: Intel and the $1.5T chip industry meltdown

#595

Post by whimsicalism »

lovich wrote: post #446
whimsicalism wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Clearly denying Ukrainian identity & culture is part of the Russian project here and is linked to forced relocation/adoption. My question was merely on the claim that Russia desired to murder & cremate some >1% of the Ukrainian population.

It looks like the thread got stuck on a technicality around the cremations. I think I still agree with the initial, wider hypothesis the poster had with > It was never a question of "no war and survive" VS "die in war" - but "no war, die anyways" VS "war, possibly survive" Especially if, like most groups of humans as were tribal, the dissolution of your tribe is almost equivalent to not surviving

> Especially if, like most groups of humans as were tribal, the dissolution of your tribe is almost equivalent to not surviving

I view this as dehumanizing. I would rather live and not be an American than die while being an American. I suspect most people are the same.

Re: Intel and the $1.5T chip industry meltdown

#596

Post by lmm »

terminalcommand wrote: post #316
xxpor wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ASML is (now) a company everyone has heard of, but like GP hinted at with their Zeiss comment, their supply chain is crazy deep as well. Getting everything scaled up across companies and countries is far from trivial.

That's true, but this is one of the most important techs we have. From the recent news, I see that TSMC wants ASML to scale up as well. TSMC announced that it will cut its capital expenditure by 10% due to supply problems. This announcement tanked ASML's share price. My comment is that ASML is hitting their profit targets, they have backlog until 2024. If I were leading ASML or an employee of it, I wouldn't want to s…

Frustrating your consumers by not being able to supply their orders is how you stop being a monopoly. Eventually your backlog is long enough that it becomes worth your clients figuring out how to do what you do in-house, or a startup spots an opportunity. Being oversubscribed is a nice position to be in, but it doesn't mean you can rest on your laurels. (Plus, even if you're hitting your profit targets, leaving a boatload of money on the table has gotta be frustrating for at least some of ASML's employees and insiders).

Re: Intel and the $1.5T chip industry meltdown

#597

Post by bouncycastle »

adeptima wrote: post #59
bouncycastle wrote: post #50

Related: There is a massive TSMC factory being built in Japan right now. Take a look at the pictures, I've never seen this many cranes at one location: https://www.nhk.jp/static/assets/images/newblogposting/ts/7P... https://cdn-cw-english.cwg.tw/ckeditor/202205/ckeditor-628ae... It looks like a forest of cranes...

"The plant will produce 22-nanometer and 28-nanometer chips to address strong global demand for speciality chip technologies, they said" I'm curious why not the latest - 3nm, 5nm

Because Moore's Law has stopped at 28nm.

https://www.eetimes.com/28nm-was-last-node-of-moores-law/

Re: Intel and the $1.5T chip industry meltdown

#598

Post by cromwellian »

mywittyname wrote: post #364
windexh8er wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How? China doesn't possess the capability to build their own competitive chips. The chips they do manufacture do not require high precision. Everything I've read about China over the last few years has indicated it is, generally, unsustainable. From their disastrous fiscal policies of internal hyper-finance [0], their weakening navy [1], their aging population that's well on its way through decline [2] and the [3] co…

China has recently developed a low-altitude, hyper-sonic missile platform (DF-ZF) for which the USA doesn't have a great defense against. And this platform is specifically designed to attack carrier groups. THAAD can theoretically stop these missiles but the range for doing so is extremely limited due to the speed (up to Mach 10) and low altitude these missiles fly at.

These are not true hypersonic cruise missiles (e.g. a SCRAMJet), instead they are ballistic missiles with an unpowered hypersonic glider warhead. Thus, they aren't too dissimilar from the way ICBMs work for missile defense with EKVs being needed to intercept. The intercept speed of EKVs IIRC is over Mach 25.

Thus, the interception goal would be to get them in their boost phase, or mid-course phase, rather than the terminal phase after they've launched the HGV (hypersonic glide vehicle). HGV phase, I think only laser/particle weapons would work given the time between detection and firing solution. But for mid-course, they could use SM-3/SM-6. The SM-3 is specifically designed for targets like the DF. So AEGIS systems with SM-3 might be effective in protecting US carriers as long as the launches are detected. The problem is, the HGV only spends a much shorter time in ballistic phase, and once it re-enters the atmosphere, it is no longer on a predictable ballistic trajectory.

That said, military tech often works much better in theory than in reality. The USSR/Russia had a fearsome military tech on paper, the evidence in Ukraine seems to be it was hyperbole.

Re: Intel and the $1.5T chip industry meltdown

#599

Post by lmm »

tanseydavid wrote: post #181
tannhaeuser wrote: post #38

Thanks (O/T: copy-pasting text into vim to even read TFA high times to flag ad-ridden, basically unreadable content, or not link to it in the first place)

>> or not link to it in the first place Please, do not suggest this. You can decide for yourself whether or not you want to go to the extra effort to read the content. And then the rest of us can also decide for ourselves.

Flagging is the right thing to do with articles that are too spammy, whether that's because of the content or the presentation.

Re: Intel and the $1.5T chip industry meltdown

#600

Post by MikePlacid »

patentatt wrote: post #455
MikePlacid wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I can't wait for the next grocery innovation of having the customers stock the shelves from the backroom before they can fill a sack with onions. Think bolder. As a software engineer in the Soviet Union I had to spend about three weeks each year in the collective farm fields planting, tending and harvesting potatoes and cabbages. Since some of my American friends are very fond of socialism these days - these types…

Not saying that wasn't difficult, but that actually sounds pretty cool to me. And not to be overly pedantic (although we are on hn here, and when in Rome...), but leading American socialist movements are focused on democratic socialism, much like many European countries where I'm pretty sure forced agrarian labor isn't a thing.

> leading American socialist movements are focused on democratic socialism

Is there possible anything democratic without free speech?

( Speaking of which. In the Soviet Union all western media - newspapers and magazines - was put under the lock. Foreign propaganda. Sounds familiar? Only trusted persons could get the key. Funny thing is all former Party media - newspapers and magazines from former years - were put under the same lock. Protocols of former Party congresses too. Dangerous, same as foreign propaganda. And now I see this:

https://taibbi.substack.com/p/youtube-demonetizes-tk-content

YouTube demonetized a video showing years of audio and video clips, tweets, and headlines produced by the Party politicians at about and after 2016 - nothing else.

So we may be not there yet but we are sure sailing in the same direction ).

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