Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Semiconductors are more than just processors and GPUs

blog.robertelder.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 92 posts

Re: Semiconductors are more than just processors and GPUs

#71

Post by rusticpenn »

mywittyname wrote: post #51
zargon wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not TSMC capacity that's the problem. It's the large nodes that make everything except cutting-edge processors. Nobody builds a new large-node fab, but demand for large node components keeps rising.

Demand for semiconductors only recently exploded. In 2016, annual growth suddenly tripled for a few years. It's hard to know if this rate of growth is sustainable, or if it will fall back to "normal" again soon.

It was predicted though. There are many roadmaps predicting the increase in use of semiconductor sensors (trillion sensors roadmap) etc.

Re: Semiconductors are more than just processors and GPUs

#72

Post by kragen »

swamp40 wrote: post #29

I spent most of the day yesterday chasing down crosses for P-Channel FETs. They are all GONE. No stock of anything (except the crappy ones, super-tiny packages, high Vgs(th) or high Rds(on) and other leftovers). I've never seen anything like this, it's kind of frightening. Like walking into a grocery store and seeing the aisles all EMPTY except for a few scraps. I don't even know where they all went. It's not like yo…

What are crosses?

Re: Semiconductors are more than just processors and GPUs

#74

Post by elevaet »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #30
analognoise wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I know they cost less for a while, but the 90's were 30 years ago. That's vintage, isn't it? In the 90's, stuff from the 60's was 'vintage'. By 2022... the 90's are vintage?

We look back on the 60s with nostalgia. The 90s? Not so much. I think that colors our definition of what is "vintage".

This might just be your perspective. No idea your age, but personally as someone who was a teen/young adult in the 90s participating in the emerging rave culture, the 90s are dripping with nostalgia.

That being said, I have to agree that the word 'vintage' evokes the 50-70s more than the 90s. Maybe the word has just come to mean that era in the english language, just like 'olden days' tends to mean a pre/semi-industrialized era that's somewhat locked in time.

Perhaps we're running out of words for the past and we simply call these eras by their decades now.

Re: Semiconductors are more than just processors and GPUs

#75

Post by [deleted] »

bluesquared wrote: post #36
swamp40 wrote: post #29

I spent most of the day yesterday chasing down crosses for P-Channel FETs. They are all GONE. No stock of anything (except the crappy ones, super-tiny packages, high Vgs(th) or high Rds(on) and other leftovers). I've never seen anything like this, it's kind of frightening. Like walking into a grocery store and seeing the aisles all EMPTY except for a few scraps. I don't even know where they all went. It's not like yo…

It's my current living nightmare. Endless treadmill of: 1. Our contract manufacturer calls in a panic no longer able to obtain/was shorted on a shipment of part XYZ. XYZ is increasingly becoming random "jellybean" parts like MOSFETS, oscillators, to slightly-more-complicated but not "fancy" stuff like serial transceivers, USB stuff, NOR flash, load switches. TI is the bane of my existence currently. 2. Search for a d…

[deleted]

Re: Semiconductors are more than just processors and GPUs

#76

Post by DaniFong »

agumonkey wrote: post #4
magicalhippo wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Steve Mould had a video[1] about this a couple of years ago where he shows a small solar panel lighting up. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WGKz2sUa0w

Is it possible to have a light / emw battery ?

interesting thought, and i think so :) dm's open at @daniellefong on twitter

Re: Semiconductors are more than just processors and GPUs

#77

Post by drdeca »

amelius wrote: post #69
deelowe wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many electronics work that way. Motors can also generate electricity. Inductors can create or sense magnetic fields. Resistance is generally temperature dependent. Etc.

I just hope my TV can't be used as a camera ...

Well, pairing the TV with a light sensor in a fixed location, and like, having the tv alternate between a sequence of different patterns, and recording how this changes the reading of the light sensor, and assuming that the room is otherwise dark, uh, apparently can be used to produce an image of the room as if taken from the location of the tv and illuminated from the position of the light sensor?

Re: Semiconductors are more than just processors and GPUs

#78

Post by exmadscientist »

kragen wrote: post #72
swamp40 wrote: post #29

I spent most of the day yesterday chasing down crosses for P-Channel FETs. They are all GONE. No stock of anything (except the crappy ones, super-tiny packages, high Vgs(th) or high Rds(on) and other leftovers). I've never seen anything like this, it's kind of frightening. Like walking into a grocery store and seeing the aisles all EMPTY except for a few scraps. I don't even know where they all went. It's not like yo…

What are crosses?

It's short for "cross-references", which in the context of parts means "alternate parts".

Re: Semiconductors are more than just processors and GPUs

#79

Post by exmadscientist »

sitzkrieg wrote: post #31
swamp40 wrote: post #29

I spent most of the day yesterday chasing down crosses for P-Channel FETs. They are all GONE. No stock of anything (except the crappy ones, super-tiny packages, high Vgs(th) or high Rds(on) and other leftovers). I've never seen anything like this, it's kind of frightening. Like walking into a grocery store and seeing the aisles all EMPTY except for a few scraps. I don't even know where they all went. It's not like yo…

ive been trying to find some power mosfets to certain specs for a BOM for.. over a year!

A year? It seems like you should have been able to come up with something within a year? Unless it's an exotic or you have tight targets for cost or supplier qualification.

If you're willing to share the original part number, I'm curious as to what FET could cause so much grief.

Re: Semiconductors are more than just processors and GPUs

#80

Post by SECProto »

thehappypm wrote: post #25
SECProto wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speed of light is fast, even if possible you'd be looking at a lot of conversion losses. It'd be like trying to use a wire as a battery because power has to travel from one end to the other

I’ve heard of materials that can slow down the speed of light propagation. Imagine you can slow the speed of light to a crawl. You shine a huge amount of light into this material, which has a mirror on the other side. Before your light arrives back at the source, swap it for a mirror. You’ve now got a huge amount of light energy trapped.

Okay, I imagined it. Converting electricity into light is inefficient (maxing out around 44% [1] excluding ballast losses), and converting light into electricity is also inefficient (topping out at 47%[2] efficiency). So you'd end up with a battery that stores energy at extremely low efficiency (less than 21% combined), relying on a hypothetical exotic material that can slow light transmission to ~0.00000001c, assuming you don't mind using a hypothetical box that is 1km long, and you can shine the light and replace the light with a mirror in Or you could buy a lithium-ion battery off the shelf today at 95% round trip efficiency and low self discharge.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luminous_efficacy#Lighting_eff...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_cell_efficiency

Post reply on HN