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The world is one bad decision away from a silicon Ice Age

theregister.com

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Re: The world is one bad decision away from a silicon Ice Age

#7
post #4

If a hot war pops off over Taiwan, affordable CPUs are going to be a ways down the list of my concerns

Except everything that runs on electricity has a CPU nowadays; the world as it is cannot function without computing. Your bank, your (municipal) government, airplanes, ships, satellites, televisions, the cell network, cash registers, you get the picture.

I realize the CPU's that requires won't implode on day one, but computing becoming unaffordable or even economically unfeasible will have disastrous knock on effects.

Re: The world is one bad decision away from a silicon Ice Age

#8
post #4

If a hot war pops off over Taiwan, affordable CPUs are going to be a ways down the list of my concerns

Car manufacturing grinds to a halt. Remember what happened to auto prices in 2022? 10x that.

New appliances cannot be manufactured. What dos the absolute absence of new durable goods do to the economy?

There’s no new iPhone for five years. No new electronic hardware at all. What does Apple stock do?

Own any index funds? Those tank too.

Rinse and repeat

Thinking of it as “affordable pcs” is exactly wrong which is actually useful. Invert your totally wrong answer and now you have an actual thought.

Re: The world is one bad decision away from a silicon Ice Age

#9
post #7
post #4

If a hot war pops off over Taiwan, affordable CPUs are going to be a ways down the list of my concerns

Except everything that runs on electricity has a CPU nowadays; the world as it is cannot function without computing. Your bank, your (municipal) government, airplanes, ships, satellites, televisions, the cell network, cash registers, you get the picture. I realize the CPU's that requires won't implode on day one, but computing becoming unaffordable or even economically unfeasible will have disastrous knock on effects…

There are literally hundreds of semiconductor fabs of various types and process nodes spread all around the world ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_semiconductor_fabricat... ) and the most common chips are fabricated on older, larger process nodes anyway.

Re: The world is one bad decision away from a silicon Ice Age

#10
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except everything that runs on electricity has a CPU nowadays; the world as it is cannot function without computing. Your bank, your (municipal) government, airplanes, ships, satellites, televisions, the cell network, cash registers, you get the picture. I realize the CPU's that requires won't implode on day one, but computing becoming unaffordable or even economically unfeasible will have disastrous knock on effects…

There are literally hundreds of semiconductor fabs of various types and process nodes spread all around the world ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_semiconductor_fabricat... ) and the most common chips are fabricated on older, larger process nodes anyway.

Those are facts, but the industry remains fragile. It didn't take much during Covid, and the Nexperia supply shock combined with DRAM shortages are doing a number on automotive right now.

And I imagine the chips manufactured on older larger process nodes would be subsumed to replace newer ones where possible, which cascades. But that's just conjecture on my part.

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