[HN Gopher] Global chip shortage may soon turn into an oversuppl...
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Global chip shortage may soon turn into an oversupply crisis
Author : hhs
Score : 256 points
Date : 2022-02-27 15:56 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (asia.nikkei.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (asia.nikkei.com)
| [deleted]
| Wanzy wrote:
| nikanj wrote:
| I have no idea how much of the chip supply is soaked by cryptos,
| but I have a feeling the pop is going to be ugly
| wyager wrote:
| One upside of Bitcoin style mining is that its mining chips
| can't be used for anything else (no GPUs, CPUs, FPGAs, or SSDs
| used for Bitcoin mining - only special SHA256 ASICs), so it
| doesn't have much effect on the supply of semiconductors
| outside of a small number of older foundries allocating some
| capacity to BTC chips. Other projects like Ethereum
| intentionally used GPU-optimized mining algorithms, with the
| idea that this would help decentralization (which hasn't really
| worked for various reasons).
| bcrl wrote:
| Bitcoin ASICs are hardly on older process nodes. Intel's just
| announced chips are using their 7nm process, Bitmain is on
| TSMC 7nm and 5nm, while Microbit is on Samsung's 8nm.
| Animats wrote:
| _Structurally, electrification, such as the mass production of
| electric vehicles, and digitalization need semiconductors, mostly
| of the high-end variety that can only be produced by the most
| advanced semiconductor foundries_
|
| There's nothing about electric car propulsion that requires "high
| end semiconductors". Auto companies have been pricing electric
| cars as a luxury product, and adding too much crap that has
| nothing to do with the powertrain to justify that to buyers.
| est31 wrote:
| > There's nothing about electric car propulsion that requires
| "high end semiconductors".
|
| Fundamentally, no, but that doesn't mean that these cars have
| been designed with chip availability in mind, so at least one
| of the components in the cars relies on chips that are not in
| supply. It's not a fundamental requirement but due to how they
| are being built. The article is still wrong though, namely
| because there is nothing special about electric cars. For ICE
| cars, there are supply chain issues too.
| sremani wrote:
| I can put in the source -- but I read somewhere that EVs use
| twice the number of "chips" compared to conventional cars.
|
| edit: - here is a source -- but not the one I read in past.
| https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/chip-shortage-
| thr....
| nsm wrote:
| Exactly! I would love to own a simple compact car like the
| Honda Fit or similar with an electric drive train and without
| leather seats, fancy wheels and various electronic assistive
| driving features.
| Tempest1981 wrote:
| Chevy Bolt is a similar size. Or ID.3 (non-US). Or a used
| eGolf.
| pureliquidhw wrote:
| Isn't that a Nissan leaf?
| surfmike wrote:
| It is, I'm quite happy with mine and you can find leases
| dirt cheap. And actually their optional assistive driving
| system works quite well.
| FooHentai wrote:
| I love our Leaf but ProPilot isn't that great, very much
| version 0.1 of something that might be less crap in
| future. The adaptive cruise control bit is fantastic but
| lane following only works when you're on very well marked
| roads that don't curve much i.e. highway driving and
| comes with a page-long list of times when it just won't
| work (driving into the sun, with wipers on, in fog, etc
| etc). Anywhere other than the highway it'll dance on and
| off every five seconds. Plus you have to weld your hands
| to the wheel and continuously wiggle a little or it'll
| turn itself off, which makes it mostly pointless.
|
| Self-park is similarly crappy. Way too slow to be of any
| use.
|
| Unless you're buying new though it's certainly worth
| getting one with ProPilot because the price difference in
| the second hand market is practically nothing. I dunno if
| the lower trim levels come with the 360 camera either but
| that's a great feature as well.
| fragmede wrote:
| Tesla and BMW have, but they're hardly the entire electric car
| market. Other all-electric vehicles like the Nissan Leaf EV
| ($23k MSRP) or Chevy Bolt ($34k MSRP) are positively affordable
| compared to a Tesla Model 3 ($45k MSRP) or BMW i3 ($44k MSRP).
| Both of those are still cheap next to a Jaguar iPace ($70k
| MSRP) or a Tesla Model S ($95k) though.
|
| Keep in mind that even a Honda Civic starts off at $22k MSRP
| these days.
| tthun wrote:
| I wish Tesla would cut the crap about self driving tech
| (which is probably driving up their margins and their stock
| value) and bring more affordable mass market cars to market.
| Clearly selling high margin cars is good for business but one
| can hope.
| smsm42 wrote:
| Why would they do that? Being a luxury brand has a lot of
| advantages. No reason for them to dilute it with cheap
| offerings - others could pick up that market, if they want
| to.
| arcticbull wrote:
| I strongly suspect that would be a disaster for their stock
| price.
|
| They remain priced at $837B market cap (even after a
| dramatic recent rout where Elon sold the top and is now
| under SEC investigation for doing so), while Toyota has a
| $300B market cap. Toyota makes ~8M cars per year [1]. Tesla
| made 400K cars last year [2].
|
| Toyota made 20X more cars and has a market cap just 36% of
| TSLA.
|
| There's a few ways cultists (err, sorry, investors) justify
| this valuation gap.
|
| 1. Self driving cars.
|
| 2. High margins.
|
| If you give up on self-driving and you start making lower-
| margin cars, you start to look an awful lot like a car
| company, which would mean you'd have to reduce their stock
| price to just 10-20% of where it's at right now. From $800
| to $80-160. And that's _generous_ , leaving room for some
| of their fun pet projects like the always-next-year solar
| roof tile [3].
|
| [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/267272/worldwide-
| vehicle...
|
| [2] https://backlinko.com/tesla-stats
|
| [3] https://electrek.co/2022/02/02/tesla-supply-chain-
| issues-ext...
| bluGill wrote:
| The other auto makers are also in self driving '.they are
| only doing quiet R&D, but if you are betting on
| automation Tesla isn't the best long term bet even before
| you look at potential upside.
| peteradio wrote:
| WTH wouldn't a car named leaf come in green. Hard pass!
| KyeRussell wrote:
| You'd think so. Unfortunately not.
| daniel-grigg wrote:
| Is that the US? Pricing can be weird depending on region. In
| AU a leaf starts at $50K, a model3 at $60K, not much
| difference really. The cheapest here actually is the MG at
| 45K. But more competitors are starting to ramp so I expect
| prices will drop across the board as EV becomes a commodity.
| bluGill wrote:
| Automakers prefer low end chips because cars are an extreme
| environment. Cars need to start at -70c and +50c. For that
| latter one some of them need to work when it is sunny and they
| are inside the car which adds a lot more.
| deckar01 wrote:
| The Ford F-150 Lightning's extended range battery is currently
| only being offered as part of a $20k luxury electronics package
| starting at the XLT trim. The XLT is itself a mostly cosmetic
| $10k lighting package. You have to spend 80% over the base
| price to increase the battery capacity 30%.
| Animats wrote:
| Stellantis is worse. The all-electric Jeep Wrangler is
| supposed to come out in 2024 priced around $70,000. You have
| to get the "Rubicon" "trim level", which used to mean
| differential lockers and a lower low gear, but now includes
| such things as "biometric owner identification".
|
| This kind of thinking is going to result in Chinese electric
| car manufacturers taking over the industry.
| avalys wrote:
| Your credibility is damaged by the fact that Stellantis has
| not announced any all-electric Jeep Wrangler, certainly not
| pricing or trim levels, and doesn't offer biometric owner
| identification on any current or future models either.
|
| You seem to be getting upset about a situation that exists
| only in your (or someone else's) imagination.
| ok123456 wrote:
| People will shell out insane amounts of money because of
| the Jeep brand. Clapped out, 10-year-old ones still can get
| $20k, even if you tried to take it remotely "off-road" it
| would break in 10 different ways.
|
| If people made purely rational decisions when purchasing a
| car, the only manufactures left would be Toyota and Honda.
| jlawer wrote:
| > If people made purely rational decisions when
| purchasing a car, the only manufactures left would be
| Toyota and Honda.
|
| Not sure if this is different regions or just dated. In
| Australia now, Honda is a joke. They are overpriced,
| offer terrible support, etc. Toyota is quality beige,
| overpriced but reliable, kind of like Sony TVs 15 years
| ago before Samsung and LG became dominate.
|
| Just like with TVs, the Korean companies (Hyundai & Kia)
| are the smart money brands at least in the Australian
| Market.
| Casteil wrote:
| Yep - makes the base model F150 Lightning feel like a 'loss
| leader'
| [deleted]
| grogenaut wrote:
| Are the power switching components similar to MOSFETs not a
| relatively advanced and recent device?
|
| Peoe usually think of advanced as Nvidia chips, but there are
| other parts.
| amelius wrote:
| Perhaps, but my guess is they don't need to operate at high
| frequencies, which lowers the bar for complexity.
| pwr-electronics wrote:
| The do need high frequencies. It's orders of magnitude
| slower than digital, but the amount of power being switched
| presents entirely new problems. You could flip your
| statement around and say that digital circuits are less
| complex because they're low power. But that would be
| equally meaningless.
|
| Digital FETs are CMOS made with fins or whatever to switch
| as fast as possible. Analog FETs are something else to make
| clean predictable signals from mature manufacturing
| processes. Power FETs are big arrays of trenches to not
| destroy themselves. You can't really compare them. That
| would be like comparing a racecar to a passenger van to a
| mining truck. They're all vehicles, but they have different
| purposes and metrics.
| sigstoat wrote:
| the slower your power MOSFET, the more power you waste and
| heat you generate.
| baybal2 wrote:
| I am not an professional EE, but a person who
| professionally works on circuits from time to time.
|
| That's absolutely not the case. The higher is the
| switching frequency, they higher are the switching losses
| in a MOSFET.
|
| MOSFET is an electro _static_ device, the charge needs to
| both go in, and out from the gate. The more switching,
| the more current goes through the gate back-and-forth.
| pwr-electronics wrote:
| You're talking about different things. A slow FET has a
| slow rise time. It spends more time crossing through the
| inefficient region between fully off and fully on.
| Switching frequency is how often you cross in one
| direction.
|
| Up to a point, you can decrease total loss by trading
| conduction loss for switching loss by increasing
| frequency. After that point, you start losing efficiency
| again. There's a sweet spot.
| amelius wrote:
| This is true, but if you don't switch very often, then it
| doesn't matter as much :)
| kurthr wrote:
| MOSFETs (both Si/SiC and more recent GaN) switching
| transistors may be made on special (Epi or Sapphire) wafers,
| but the Fabs are very old school (e.g. 2-6in vs 12in for
| CMOS) and the process geometries are practically neolithic
| (e.g. 90s). Processing equipment is more limited by the lack
| of desire to build or support something so old. Die sizes are
| also quite reasonable (e.g. 4kW/cm2) However, there is still
| enormous capacity for processing them around the world (both
| in US/EU, and around Asia).
|
| Perhaps, for the new GaN on Sapphire wafers there could be a
| significant manufacturing limit? Mostly, those are used for
| Blue LEDs today.
| greggsy wrote:
| Are GaN2 and 3 more exotic, r are they just newer
| iterations of GaN?
| kurthr wrote:
| Those appear to marketing names applied to DC Chargers. I
| suspect that the GaN2&3 refer to higher frequency
| operation. This may be due to lower parasitic
| capacitances, and would allow smaller
| components/inductors to be used at comparable
| efficiencies and lower cost. Certainly, the wafers and
| materials seem to be the same.
| pstrateman wrote:
| High power MOSFETs are definitely advanced devices... but not
| produced on the same process as say a CPU or GPU chip.
| tyingq wrote:
| I suppose they need things ICE cars don't usually have, to
| control multiple motors, a torque controller, regenerative
| braking, battery management, charge controllers, electric
| heating, and so on. But then ICE has to manage things they
| don't, like O2 sensors, ignition timing, etc.
| revax wrote:
| Those functions don't require the most "high-end
| semiconductors".
| tyingq wrote:
| High end for the embedded/automotive space, perhaps?
| Meaning more 32 bit MCUs in 3-digit Mhz clock speeds.
| baybal2 wrote:
| > There's nothing about electric car propulsion that requires
| "high end semiconductors".
|
| Yes, the article is written by a person who has no idea what he
| is saying
| GeorgeTirebiter wrote:
| I maintain that most of the car's electronic guts (minus
| infotainment and auto-steer etc) could be done with a handful
| of 8051s. The problem is almost nobody it seems knows assembly
| anymore. The standards of CAN and LIN were created in the days
| of 8-bit MPUs, even I2C is quite old.
|
| (I like assembly, but would never suggest it for a professional
| situation unless painted into some unforeseen corner, and assy
| would be the only way out.)
| javcasas wrote:
| Is there a 8051-based microcontroller with the usual FLASH
| memory and with tools to program it like a PLC?
|
| Hardware should be programmed like PLCs, we are just
| overcomplicating most hardware stuff by throwing OO & FP at
| it.
| [deleted]
| 14u2c wrote:
| As far as I've seen the shortage as it relates to electric
| vehicles is due to a lack of power devices, such as high
| power MOSFETs, not logic ICs.
| cjsplat wrote:
| Completely unclear what they mean by "high end".
|
| If you are doing a new design and estimates of area, pads,
| packaging and volumes are in the right place, TSMC 28nm or
| Intel 22nm are both very nice design points.
|
| Proven tech, single patterned mask sets, fully amortized fabs.
|
| At typical automobile volume, it is unlikely that a sub 10nm
| design would pencil out.
|
| (Edit : oops - Vision and/or ML engines for self-driving or
| driver assist might get there as long as the design is not
| dedicated to typical car volume)
| clessg wrote:
| Finally some good news, bring on the crisis!
|
| /s, I think...?
| okl wrote:
| Yes, bring it! :D
| TameAntelope wrote:
| Hopefully the strategy teams at these large semiconductor
| companies are aware of the Bullwhip Effect [0] and the
| investments we're seeing are being done with that knowledge
| already in hand.
|
| IMO the more interesting part of this article is the prediction
| that a bifurcation will take place. Still a good thing, but
| interesting that, as of now, most media talks about the "chip
| shortage" in terms of "Is there a shortage or not?" rather than a
| more complex model.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullwhip_effect
| marcosdumay wrote:
| The future was much more certain a couple of week ago.
|
| But yes, that's expected. After supply-line shocks shortage and
| oversupply follow each other. If people play their cards right,
| they get a quickly decreasing amplitude on those crises, if they
| play wrong, they get always increasing ones until a lot get
| bankrupt.
|
| The chip manufacturers seem well aware of the problem and to be
| playing it correctly. I wouldn't bet on the oversupply crisis
| being nearly as large as the shortage.
| mrfusion wrote:
| > The future was much more certain a couple of week ago.
|
| Turn off the news and you'll be much happier. Remember they
| only make money if they've scared you into watching.
| Raed667 wrote:
| >Turn off the news and you'll be much happier
|
| what a privileged thing to say
| cpsns wrote:
| Maybe, but it's the truth. Most events don't matter on a
| local or individual level and having access to global news
| updated every single second is a very recent development,
| one that seems to be contributing to an incredible amount
| of anxiety and stress for many people/society as a whole.
|
| Perhaps a more reasonable approach is reading the news once
| a week. You stay informed, but it's not something you worry
| about daily.
| spicybright wrote:
| It's not the truth. You can absolutely read the news and
| live a happier life from it. I feel better knowing what's
| going on outside my little bubble even if it's bad stuff.
|
| It's on the individual to find a happy balance of media
| consumption for their mental health in the same way it's
| on the individual not to eat candy every day for lunch.
| biohacker85 wrote:
| There is nothing wrong with privilege. In fact, some would
| say increasing privilege for oneself and their family is
| the purpose of life.
| coolso wrote:
| > what a privileged thing to say
|
| Yeah! Imagine being so privileged you're allowed to turn
| off the news and feel happier without mom and dad grounding
| you from the internet or the government aiming a nuke at
| you in response, which would thereby prevent you from
| typing words into a text box and clicking the Reply button
| when you're done writing your thoughts.
|
| That would suck because then someone else wouldn't be able
| to come along and not actually provide a counterpoint to
| your comments, but instead just write "what a privileged
| thing to say", undoubtedly smirking while simultaneously
| sipping a latte and clicking Reply to submit their
| effortless snarky reply from their $5K/month apartment
| located in the heart of some tech city.
| ejb999 wrote:
| really, you have to be privileged to not watch the news?
| Then I guess by your reasoning, all those folks that can't
| afford tv or internet at all are the most privileged of
| all, correct?
| dessant wrote:
| Yes, when there is a heightened risk of nuclear contamination
| in Europe because of a stray rocket in a war zone, we should
| tune out instead.
| mrfusion wrote:
| You'll always find a reason the latest crisis is worth
| being scared of. But we're just going to go from one crisis
| to the next so we need a way to make peace with that.
|
| I think CS Lewis explained it well when the atomic bomb was
| created:
|
| > In one way we think a great deal too much of the atomic
| bomb. "How are we to live in an atomic age?" I am tempted
| to reply: "Why, as you would have lived in the sixteenth
| century when the plague visited London almost every year,
| or as you would have lived in a Viking age when raiders
| from Scandinavia might land and cut your throat any night;
| or indeed, as you are already living in an age of cancer,
| an age of syphilis, an age of paralysis, an age of air
| raids, an age of railway accidents, an age of motor
| accidents."
| dessant wrote:
| Remember that not everyone lives at a safe distance from
| the events that you prefer to tune out. We haven't been
| referring to low probability threats that are ever
| present in our daily lives, but acute issues that could
| change our lives very fast, especially if we don't pay
| attention.
| spicybright wrote:
| To add, there's no requirement that you must keep tabs on
| every atrocity in the world at all times. No one is
| forcing people to check twitter every hour to tank your
| emotional energy every day.
| [deleted]
| jeromegv wrote:
| Is turning off the news in Ukraine allowing you to live your
| life? What if your city was bombed, would you advocate to
| avoid the news and be happy?
| Aperocky wrote:
| Don't deal in absolutes.
|
| For me personally, I find the war to be incredibly
| distracting, because my attention was almost constantly
| drawn to it. But throughout the past few days I learned a
| few thing:
|
| The situation on the ground does not change that quickly,
| fresh reports are often wrong or fabricated. But most
| importantly: I've gotten myself to be constantly obsessed
| over a distant war which made me forget what I actually
| wanted to do over the past few days.
|
| I'll continue to follow the news, but not every hour and
| minute, and I'm just thankful a place like this exist.
| dageshi wrote:
| How much should we watch? Serious question.
|
| Because we can completely fill our days with what's going
| on in Ukraine and yet be able to do very little about it at
| an individual level and I'm really not sure that's good for
| someone's sanity.
| thetallstick wrote:
| I was thinking the same thing. It's not like I'm being
| asked to direct troops or something.
|
| Instead of watching/reading news for hours. Take 30 min
| to donate some money and email your representative in
| Congress on your beliefs. You'll have done way more to
| help your cause than watching news and you get your day
| back.
| dasil003 wrote:
| If the default MO of the news media is to stoke fears and
| sensationalize the mundane in order to profit off higher
| viewership, then it's _all the more important_ that we fight
| through the de-sensitization and pay attention when
| meaningful world events happen.
| qzx_pierri wrote:
| The juice isn't worth the squeeze.
| mcbutterbunz wrote:
| > Turn off the news and you'll be much happier.
|
| Rather, be informed and watch whats happening with a critical
| mindset. Ignorance may be bliss but its also irresponsible.
| ScoobleDoodle wrote:
| I've been thinking of splitting the difference and looking
| at news once a week. I guess that's like the traditional
| Sunday newspaper.
|
| Now I think it needs to allow for exceptions for events
| like now with Russia invading Ukraine.
| CyanBird wrote:
| Just read Lemonde Diplomatique
|
| Cut NYT, CNN, The Guardian and all the rest, you'll be
| happier and will be better informed
| Godel_unicode wrote:
| I'm extremely skeptical of any suggestion to get your
| news from only one source, what do you think makes that
| source different?
| MobiusHorizons wrote:
| Thanks for the recommendation, I've been looking for long
| form news.
| Tijdreiziger wrote:
| I installed NOS's (the Dutch public broadcaster's) app on
| my phone and turned on push notifications. This way I get
| informed about important news, but can easily avoid
| everything else.
| Beltalowda wrote:
| Why don't you just travel in time and get the news from
| the future?
| mrfusion wrote:
| On the contrary your whole goal should be to avoid the
| exceptions.
| Beltalowda wrote:
| I don't think "the news" is actually all that good at
| informing people. "This happened and then this happened,
| and now for the weather" are facts and information without
| context, and without any real meaning.
|
| I haven't watched the news for years, or read the
| newspapers. I do real articles from magazines and
| newspapers and books and such (from HN, among other
| places), which are far more useful. I don't really know
| what's going on in Ukraine _right this moment_ , but most
| will have forgotten that in two weeks time anyway, so
| what's the point? Instead I spent some time reading up on
| the context a few weeks ago.
|
| The news is also strongly biased towards negative events.
| The classic example is that "plane crashed" is big news,
| but that planes are actually very safe. "Man spills pint
| and gets punched" is news. "Man spills pint and it's all
| fine" is not. etc. It's not a particularly good reflection
| of reality.
| thatguy0900 wrote:
| The irresponsible thing is a whole industry bent on
| demoralizing and causing hate within the masses, ignorance
| might be less irresponsible
| kortilla wrote:
| If you're watching the news to be informed you're still
| ignorant, but now unhappy and indignant about things you
| don't understand.
| bilater wrote:
| Agree but also disagree. This tweet captures it perfectly I
| think:
| https://twitter.com/nntaleb/status/1497943606962839552
| hef19898 wrote:
| Yeah, after toilet paper and masks another real life lesson of
| the Bullwhip effect.
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| The future is never certain. There are times when it feels less
| uncertain. But that's generally an illusion, a false sense of
| security. Past performance is not guarantee of future
| (returns).
|
| As someone already mentioned, the media loves to manipulating
| this state to their (profit) advantage.
| [deleted]
| jamesy0ung wrote:
| Zenst wrote:
| Or may see a shortage in capacitors, resistors,
| transistors....there will always be a weak link and for most it
| has been chips. If we shift towards an oversupply and we will as
| with such lead time to lets build a fab to lets use that fab,
| markets change momentum. SO you get growth, then shrink back to
| balance out supply, then some spike via some event or demand and
| the pulse of industry moves on.
|
| What will be more interested in is how the supply chain changes
| and will we see a more cautious approach to just in time,
| offloading warehousing to suppliers or will we see a more
| granular balance. So that will be interesting going ahead and may
| well see initial oversupply delayed filling up those buffers.
| kenjackson wrote:
| Will this mean car prices will return to normal and wait times to
| receive them won't be so long? I feel like the auto industry has
| directly impacted me the most, as I try to look to get a car.
| mrfusion wrote:
| I'm going to go back to all the dealers that ignored me and
| make them beg for my business.
| brianwawok wrote:
| Or just buy a car that has moved past the dealership model.
| There are a few now, and if the free market wins it should
| slowly replace the dealer model...
|
| Literally 4-5k saved off every car if you order direct from
| the manufacturer.
| mordae wrote:
| They way I read the article, there is going to be excess supply
| of things such as power-regulation ICs, 2.4GHz radio chips and so
| on. I'd guess that consumers will gobble these up all across the
| world in smart appliances and IoT like never before. GPUs are
| nice, but they won't regulate your heating amid rising gas
| prices.
| Saris wrote:
| Maybe I'll be able to buy stuff at MSRP then.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| better to have too much than too little. This is just some lean
| manufacturing people tut-tutting countries trying to become more
| independent
| VWWHFSfQ wrote:
| I wonder how AMD and Intel's announcement that they will stop
| chip shipments to Russia indefinitely will affect this. I don't
| know how big of a consumer Russia was but I imagine it could have
| some impact with all that stock now back on the market.
| cyberpunk wrote:
| Their economy is smaller than Italy. Some datacentres and such,
| but meh, those aren't buying bare chips from intel anyway.
| They're usually buying complete servers manufactured in other
| countries anyway.
|
| I'd be surprised if it even made a half percent dent.
| eunos wrote:
| Russian can and will import those chips from somewhere else
| VWWHFSfQ wrote:
| Where else? People always seem to say flippant things like
| this as if it's really as easy as just "oh they'll get them
| from somewhere else then".
|
| Maybe it really is that easy. I don't know. But Yandex isn't
| buying computers off Newegg anymore. That's for sure.
| adam_arthur wrote:
| China, for one. What's to stop them from buying AMD and
| reselling to Russia?
|
| Though it will still increase cost to Russia with another
| middle man involved.
| pdpi wrote:
| That is not without costs, in terms of both time and
| money. And I'm sure Russia doesn't particularly want to
| increase its dependency on China either.
| Finnucane wrote:
| They do want that. It's part of their backup plan for
| being cut off from the West. That's why Putin made a big
| show of meeting with Xi just before the invasion.
| deutschewelle wrote:
| yalogin wrote:
| I for one cannot wait for the used car market to crash. The new
| car prices have gone and I don't expect them to come down. They
| will keep the prices at the same inflated level and offer deals
| and/or loans. However there is room for elasticity in the used
| car market and can see it coming down as new car availability
| becomes better.
| hwers wrote:
| This is why I don't care about following any 'supply chain'
| worries the tech community is for some reason worried about.
| It'll undershoot, it'll overshoot, it'll balance itself out
| eventually and my interaction with it won't make a lick of
| difference.
| xondono wrote:
| > it'll balance itself out eventually and my interaction with
| it won't make a lick of difference.
|
| Then you are very lucky. My life was certainly easier before
| supply chain disruptions.
| aftbit wrote:
| Good advice for almost any crisis of the day
| JCM9 wrote:
| This is pattern than falls most supply shortages. Lumber was in
| seriously short supply during the pandemic and prices
| skyrocketed. A few months later places has more wood than they
| knew what to do with and supplies were piling up.
| flamesofphx wrote:
| Crossing fingers we will we be able to pick up 3080ti then for
| $100 bucks? I still think it may take much more time for the
| other affected industries to make up.. Which means there still
| some sort of supply chain communication problems...
| atlantas wrote:
| Or able to pick up a PS5 for MSRP? It's been sold out since it
| was released in November 2020.
| amir734jj wrote:
| At this point I don't even know if PS5 really exist. It's
| impossible to find in the store and there are some people
| whose job is find PS5 at MSRP in the stores and resell it.
| tragictrash wrote:
| I've been able to buy two at MSRP in the last month. It's
| possible, you just have to try.
| erwincoumans wrote:
| Where/how did you buy the ps5 at msrp?
| henrikschroder wrote:
| Regular stores sometimes announce restocks, so you go
| queue before opening hours to get in line for one.
|
| We grabbed a PS5 in January from Gamestop by queueing for
| a couple of hours.
| tragictrash wrote:
| There's deal alerts, specials at various retailers with a
| subscription like Walmart. You just have to continuously
| try and change up your game if it doesnt work.
| KerrAvon wrote:
| I did this late last year. Got it within the month at
| MSRP.
|
| https://www.playstation.com/en-us/ps5/register-to-buy/
|
| The only issue is that there aren't a lot of
| PS5-exclusive games.
| dawnerd wrote:
| I've been signed up since they started that and never got
| a notice to buy.
| asciimov wrote:
| Me and my friends signed up back in October, so far none
| of us has received an invite.
| Hamuko wrote:
| I managed to buy a PS5 for MSRP- _ish_. I bought the
| console for 599EUR and it came with a "free" second
| DualSense controller. The PS5 itself is 529EUR and a
| controller is 70EUR.
| ohgodplsno wrote:
| Find local Discord servers with bots and people tracking
| stocks and sales going on. Within less than a week, you
| should be able to get your hands on one.
|
| Yes, it's absolutely stupid to have to commit to this for
| a full week to just be able to buy a console.
| johnebgd wrote:
| Sales numbers on the PS5 seem to indicate demand is
| unprecedented. Even if supply can be ramped up the demand
| is still unmet. The world has never had so many people
| seeking in home entertainment simultaneously.
|
| I guess I am also part of the problem. I hate the idea of a
| scalper but I bought one from a high school student who is
| scouting them out and buying them then reselling them at a
| $100 markup over MSRP to make money for college. They
| learned to code for this. I figured it was the right kind
| of entrepreneurship to support even if the entire supply
| chain issues we face are allowing less scrupulous people to
| profit akin to how this student is.
| eric_h wrote:
| I picked one up via gamestops website of all places after
| trying and failing for over a month to get my order in at
| various retail websites. When I went to get the package
| from my doorman, told him it was a ps5 (and my
| tribulations to acquire it) and he said "oh I got one
| from a guy who lives in the building like a month ago,
| he's had lots of them coming in". I'm still mad and this
| was a few months after the launch...
| MegaButts wrote:
| > I figured it was the right kind of entrepreneurship to
| support
|
| You're supporting a scalper. You're teaching him that
| there's money to be made by positioning yourself as a
| middle man. There's no value creation here, just value
| extraction.
| nawgz wrote:
| yepguy wrote:
| That would only be true if there were actually enough
| PS5's to go around, but the scalpers bought them all up
| anyway. There's real value in the products actually being
| available to buy at all, and the only reason they're
| available is because they're being resold at a higher
| price.
| burntoutfire wrote:
| They were also available to buy before the scalpers
| bought them - that's how they bought them. The scalpers
| injecting themselves as middle men didn't change anything
| except the price.
| yepguy wrote:
| No that's wrong. If you have $850 right now you can buy a
| PS5. If nobody on earth marked up the price, you wouldn't
| be able to buy one for any amount (without getting very
| lucky or expending a lot of effort to find one).
| young_unixer wrote:
| Isn't that the fault of Sony for selling them at a lower
| price than what people are willing to pay?
|
| And the value being provided is the possibility of buying
| the PS5. Even without scalpers, chances are that someone
| else would have bought it. Scalping only works when the
| demand is very high compared to the supply.
| voakbasda wrote:
| Value extraction is what all the big tech companies do.
| Don't hate the player. Hate the game.
| rdtwo wrote:
| Costco bundle
| mrbonner wrote:
| You could try FB marketplace. I have seen MSRP floating
| around for quite the last few months. I haven't purchased one
| really because most of my friends are either on PS4 or Xbox 1
| dawnerd wrote:
| Likely scams FYI
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| What is the demand for the PS5 from/for?
|
| There aren't any games for it yet practically speaking? It's
| not like the PS2 giving you access to a DVD player or PS3 a
| blu-ray until games appear. Even if it can "4k" a PS4 HD
| game, that's not that wide an audience.
| samstave wrote:
| My brother bought one at xmas for $500. It gets played ~4
| hours a week.
|
| yet I sit and type text and browse the web on a flagship
| gaming omen RTX 3070 laptop and I cant find a game to play...
|
| Our gaming days are dwindling in this house.
| grogenaut wrote:
| It happens with age and responsibilities. My kids are grown
| and my friend are all stressed right now, so I've played 80
| hours of valheim this week and the kids have been on 16
| hours of elden ring last 2 days. Before my friends and I
| got going on valheim/astroneer I hadn't played games
| heavily for like the whole pandemic.
| rajin444 wrote:
| I've noticed this too. I think it's a mix of age and no
| good games.
|
| There's more games than ever coming out but it feels like
| the number of really good titles is still low. Kinda like
| movies and TV too. I guess the market is so large now
| it's a lot easier to succeed with mediocre content.
| grogenaut wrote:
| It wasn't really about what games were out there just
| what I felt like doing. I did a lot more physical real
| world stuff during the pandemic.
|
| There are tons of amazing games out there. It's just like
| a new book series or author though. You gotta get to the
| hook.
|
| What types of games do you like I can offer many
| suggestions. There have been plenty of amazing games in
| the last 1, 3, 5 years.
|
| Now a days it's easier to make games, you just leverage
| an engine not invent graphics primitives. But it's harder
| to get noticed and make money. And easier to make small
| losses and harder to have massive blow outs. Games is a
| lifestyle business now.
| smolder wrote:
| I think this is a discovery problem, although I don't
| know your subjective idea of a really good title. I'd say
| I have more good games than I can reasonably play, some
| with near-infinite replayability thanks to human
| opponents and a chess-like complexity of outcomes.
|
| There's a lot of cookie cutter uninspired money grubbing
| crap from big studios and small, but go find what people
| are playing by numbers, dig past the AAA shovelware, and
| there are plenty of gems.
| grogenaut wrote:
| There's great stuff from studios big and small. Sure
| they're still printing cod/bf/Madden. But they're also
| making rdr2/ghosts/botw/Mario Odyssey/Metroid
| dread/monster hunter rise. Just like indies are making
| valheim/astroneer/slay the spire/monster train/loop
| hero/hades
| Sebb767 wrote:
| You don't need to play new games. My Steam library is
| full of cheaply-bought games and there are quite a few
| childhood games I'd love to revisit.
|
| If you need a recommendation, I'd go for faster than
| light or slay the spire. If you have a lot of time, the X
| series recently released a free extension for X3:TC
| called farhams legacy, which you can pick up for dirt
| cheap. But there are many games that aged well.
| samstave wrote:
| For me, at my age and with _life_ , I feel guilty
| immersing myself, which distracts my enjoyment.
|
| For the younglings - they can give themselves fully to
| the experience.
| shephardjhon wrote:
| Not many good games these days. I recently played through
| Age Of Empires 3 and 4. I just dont like stuff like Elden
| Ring that is popular these days due to Dark Souls or every
| third person game being turned into an RPG with stats and
| inventory and side quests.
| bluescrn wrote:
| If you 'can't find a game to play' while having a fast PC,
| you probably aren't really interested in gaming any more,
| not enough to justify the time cost.
|
| Or maybe you're overwhelmed by choice, between Steam sales,
| Game Pass, indie games, F2P, Epic Store freebies, and more,
| there's always something new you can try out whithout
| spending much money at all.
|
| Although I suppose it can still be hard to find something
| really enjoyable to play if you were obsessed with a genre
| that's effectively dead these days (RTS? MMOs? Shmups?).
| But even then, there's usually indie devs out to fill every
| niche they can spot
| wing-_-nuts wrote:
| I bought a PS5 in October because I was really excited
| for BF 2042. That game was a _crushing_ disappointment.
| What 's worse is the fact that it's pulled a lot of my
| friends from BF4 and they're still playing it, hoping
| it'll get better.
|
| That's left single player games, and honestly single
| player games take a lot of time to get started. There
| have been _weeks_ now where I start my playstation, look
| at who 's playing. Look through my library to find a game
| I'm willing to sink hours into, find nothing and power
| off the machine.
| samstave wrote:
| >> _probably aren 't really interested in gaming any
| more, not enough to justify the time cost._
|
| This, basically, which to me I find completely ironic,
| given that GAMES is literally what got me into computers
| back in the 80s, ran the Intel Game Lab in the 90s,
| worked as IT for the company that originally
| manufactured, packaged and shipped many many games, such
| as EverQuest, my best friend is an Production Director at
| Blizzard (with whom I worked for at Intel's game lab) and
| many other career accolades in the gaming space thats too
| lame to go into...
|
| Whats weird, is that I ALWAYS have a high-end gaming
| machine... sans much gaming time...
| NavinF wrote:
| You jest, but I submitted a question a couple of weeks ago
| asking when it will be $1,200:
| https://www.metaculus.com/questions/9561/end-of-the-gpu-shor...
|
| Current forecast is August 2023 so I'm sure glad I bought my
| 3090 at retail price and a couple of used 2080ti right around
| the start of the chip shortage. They've been running nonstop
| training stylegan :)
| JohnJamesRambo wrote:
| https://ethereum.org/en/upgrades/merge/
|
| This is coming and you will soon have any GPU want on ebay for
| nothing.
|
| Inb4 someone tells me they will just mine something else.
| Nothing else is remotely able to handle the hashpower without
| crashing the price of the coin.
|
| https://i.imgur.com/TBouXrK.jpg
|
| That is a list of coins to mine sorted by exchange volume.
| freyr wrote:
| Perpetually right around the corner.
| mdoms wrote:
| Cryptocurrency propaganda.
| pxeger1 wrote:
| > Inb4 someone tells me they will just mine something else.
| Nothing else is remotely able to handle the hashpower without
| crashing the price of the coin.
|
| Devil's advocate: won't a fork of Ethereum which keeps PoW be
| able to do exactly that? (for example, Ethereum Classic?)
| judge2020 wrote:
| You can blame miners but it's just extremely high demand for
| these cards - once the merge happens and GPUs stop being
| super profitable, we'll see that not much has changed in
| terms of availability - and 40 series cards[0] will be just
| as hard to get. The only change might be a temporary drop in
| second-hand prices as the mining GPUs flood eBay for a month.
|
| 0: https://twitter.com/greymon55/status/1418795735802425349?s
| =2...
| omni wrote:
| This has been "coming" for years, I'm sick of seeing the
| Ethereum community use it as a way to whitewash their
| wasteful PoW excess. You and everyone else should stop even
| talking about it until it's shipped.
| abandonliberty wrote:
| Mining rewards and the price of a coin are mostly separate.
| Coins wouldn't crash, but rewards would be spread across more
| miners, reducing mining profits per hash rate.
| MisterSandman wrote:
| What's up with the weird pretentious verbage in that webpage?
| "Beacon Chain"? "Mainnet"? "The Docking"? Are they just
| exaggerated PR verbs, or am I just too old for this?
| ehsankia wrote:
| Hell, the fancy sci-fi illustration and UX design give much
| more of a "tech startup" feel than a serious monetary
| alternative.
| mattwilsonn888 wrote:
| You don't have to be old to be ignorant. "Mainnet," and
| "Chain," have non-arbitrary, universal meaning in the
| distributed ledger space. 'Beacon' is not arbitrary either
| as it fits the function it names. I'm not going to sit here
| and defend Ethereum - but to answer you question: most of
| that verbage has meaning independent of Ethereum's PR.
| jotm wrote:
| I really hope so, since I'm thinking of building a new
| computer for years now...
|
| Intel is releasing their own graphics cards, which is neat.
| It's a good time to enter the market, for sure.
| dataangel wrote:
| > Nothing else is remotely able to handle the hashpower
| without crashing the price of the coin.
|
| You fundamentally misunderstand how mining works. Difficulty
| automatically increases if blocks are being mined at faster
| than the expected rate. Needing more GPUs to mine the same
| number of coins _raises_ the price.
| jallen_dot_dev wrote:
| > Needing more GPUs to mine the same number of coins raises
| the price.
|
| Ridiculous. Price is determined by how much people are
| willing to buy or sell it at, which they decide based on
| speculation. The amount of GPUs that will be put to the
| task of mining is dependent on price. Not the other way
| around.
|
| I could create an alt coin that requires some arbitrarily
| large number of hashes to mine a single block and receive 1
| coin as reward. Yet I cannot command a higher price for it,
| because no one wants to buy my coin.
| Casteil wrote:
| It may help, but "any GPU on ebay for nothing"?
|
| Don't hold your breath...
| randomsilence wrote:
| Old numbers, but the trend was stable [1]:
|
| >Simple division yields an estimate of 13.982 million GPUs
| mining Ethereum on April 16 2021.
|
| >40 million graphic cards produced in 2020
|
| It's just 1/3 of one year's production that could be freed if
| people don't move to other coins. Is that enough to crush the
| market?
|
| [1] https://linustechtips.com/topic/1327701-honest-question-
| how-...
| freemint wrote:
| No.
| Ekaros wrote:
| Very unlikely, there will always be enough demand for most
| modern node technology to be expensive. Be it CPUs or GPUs.
| Those won't drop massively in price, but we might be lucky to
| go back to 500-1000 range.
| Aurelius3 wrote:
| Although I do think there will be an oversupply "crisis", I think
| the article is too optimistic about the timing. From what I have
| read the new foundries will start production in 2024-2025, and I
| don't see demand going down anytime soon, and that's not to
| mention some of the backlog that has accumulated. Although I am
| curious as to how amd and nvidia have been handling this. Do they
| have stockpiles of chips themselves?
| StanislavPetrov wrote:
| Exactly. "Soon" is a relative word here. It could be years.
| magicalhippo wrote:
| > Although I do think there will be an oversupply "crisis", I
| think the article is too optimistic about the timing.
|
| Same. When looking at DigiKey and Mouser they've got confirmed
| dates well into 2023 for loads of parts.
|
| Here's a random example I was looking at yesterday[1]. Sure
| they have a few in stock, but once those are gone the next
| batch is due next summer.
|
| edit: another example[2], no stock and 39k due next summer.
|
| [1]: https://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/Texas-
| Instruments/TLC59...
|
| [2]: https://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/Texas-
| Instruments/TLV62...
| greggsy wrote:
| I wonder if Mouser hold contracts with those manufacturers
| directly, or would they deal with another distributor who's
| left holding the risk?
| analog31 wrote:
| I have a tiny little side business making an electronic
| gadget. I've had to get good at substitution. Granted this is
| easier for me, I don't have to go through an engineering
| change order process, and can usually trust my gut on what's
| going to work. Still, it's a PITA.
| magicalhippo wrote:
| Yeah it's a pain for those in the business. Thankfully it's
| just a hobby for me, but I've talked to professionals who
| were on their fourth board revision due to substitutions...
| can't be fun.
| greggsy wrote:
| I feel like there's a great opportunity here for electronic
| engineers with a good eye for supply chain dynamics to
| consult into all manner of industrial and consumer markets
| to assist with strategic re-engineering of their products.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| There's alot of stuff stuck in the shipping channel or
| backlogged.
|
| Not the same commodity, but as an illustration, I just got a
| bunch of 4k computer displays direct from an OEM. Normally we
| get stuff like this 30-60 days after manufacturing. These
| devices were tagged as last July and received a week ago.
|
| I've been told that lots of stuff gets stuck waiting for final
| package assembly. (Ie the monitor stand, cable or even manual)
| Although chips aren't end user products that have to have
| accessories, many require packaging or other subcomponents that
| may be lost in the mail.
|
| Additionally, contracts prioritize certain customers, and many
| manufacturers don't have good processes to deal with
| diversions. If you order 20,000 widgets, they may not stop
| shipping until to hit some high water mark. So when the US
| government say "emergency, ship me your widgets now", your
| order gets "stolen".
|
| COVID response activity is winding down, so I'd venture to
| guess you're going to see a lot of cancelled orders and chaos.
| Imo, you'll see prices of consumer facing IT gear crash in the
| June-August timeframe as schools and students are flooded with
| gear, only to surge again as component makers retool.
|
| Also, like gas prices (quick to rise, slow to sink), I think
| you'll see manufacturers keep prices high in the many markets
| that are controlled by little cartels. Why sell Ford some chip
| for $1 when they are paying $12 today?
| jbay808 wrote:
| > Why sell Ford some chip for $1 when they are paying $12
| today?
|
| That's a very good point. When you're competing to get your
| part selected for a new design, you want to sell it cheap,
| but once they've done all the work of incorporating your part
| and testing it, you want to make it expensive. It will be
| interesting to see how this plays out.
| Aurelius3 wrote:
| I assume they have long term contracts in place for this
| kind of thing so they can't really get screwed over in that
| way.
| jbay808 wrote:
| But aren't those the contracts that they cancelled in
| 2020?
| kaftoy wrote:
| Yes they do. First, they normally buy complete
| electronics (functional devices with or without
| software), not just chips. Second, they do have strong
| contracts, spreading for 3, 4, 5+ years, specifying the
| volumes for each contracted year and also the piece price
| (among other details, of course).
| greggsy wrote:
| To add to the logistical supply chain issues, the fleet of
| Anotov aircraft (including the AN-125 and AN-225) play a
| crucial role in the fulfilling a range global logistical
| needs, but the factory in Ukraine is reportedly damaged,
| leading to expected impacts to their serviceability and spare
| parts manufacture.
|
| This will almost certainly have flow-on impacts to the
| broader shipping and commercial airline market, and further
| screw up delivery of your monitor's user manuals.
| blip54321 wrote:
| Oversupply is just as much a crisis as undersupply. The lead
| time on ramping capacity up and down is long, which leads to a
| cyclic market which overshoots in one direction or the other.
| It's hard to predict the cycles.
|
| However, an "oversupply" crisis means that either:
|
| - prices falling, meaning costs aren't covered;
|
| - equipment isn't running 24/7 as intended, leading to higher
| costs
|
| This means businesses go under. There's a firesale which is
| nice, but the structural damage is far more harmful.
|
| Personally, I'd like to see this industry a little bit more
| socialized. I'd like my chips produced in the USA, even if they
| cost a little bit more, so we're self-sufficient. I'd also like
| the supply chains to be in the US. I think the same goes for
| the EU, China, and hopefully soon, India and Africa. Having
| five independent supply chains costs five times as much, and I
| understand the efficiency argument for having just TSMC (and
| maybe Samsung or Intel), but I think both COVID and Ukraine
| highlight the risks of systemic failure.
|
| We're just a little too over-dependent on each other.
|
| I also wouldn't mind if my taxes paid for some excess, unused
| capacity, as they do with food production. That's also less
| efficient, but gives resilience.
|
| We don't need to be self-sufficient everywhere, mind you. Most
| goods aren't essential. I do think each region should be self-
| sufficient for food, medicine, and now, ICs.
| jdrc wrote:
| maybe if our supply chains were't Just-in-time we wouldnt be
| talking about these all the time
| skybrian wrote:
| Long term contracts are important. The buyers who had them
| didn't have to scramble so much. That doesn't mean stockpiling,
| necessarily.
| wyager wrote:
| There are a lot of things we could have done differently to
| prevent the current issues. Reducing capital efficiency by
| requiring massive stockpiles isn't necessarily at the top of
| the list of good ideas. I'm not saying it's a bad idea, just
| that this isn't necessarily the first thing we want to jump to
| across the market.
| adam_arthur wrote:
| Think we are well past that. Even if these companies had huge
| stockpiles, they would have been depleted long ago.
|
| No company is going to hoard multiple years worth of inputs.
| Supply has remained high in semiconductors too, it's more of a
| demand than supply problem. But of course, elevated demand and
| normal supply leads to shortages just the same as normal demand
| and shortened supply.
|
| Retail Sales:
|
| https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RSXFS
| xondono wrote:
| Maybe, but part of the issue is the massive shift of
| component stocks from suppliers to manufacturers.
|
| JIT allowed a lot of different manufacturers to "share"
| stocks, by keeping inventory in a supplier instead of in
| house.
|
| In the end we traded in risk tolerance for better efficiency,
| and most companies are now doing the opposite trade.
|
| > No company is going to hoard multiple years worth of
| inputs.
|
| I actually work with companies who have done this.
| xondono wrote:
| I think this piece is overly optimistic and maybe even ignorant
| about how semiconductor supply chains work.
|
| Semiconductor fabs take years to start production.
| FpUser wrote:
| >"Oversupply crisis"
|
| I'll take this any time. I am eyeing new server and laptop but
| prices suck at the moment for my specs.
| rossdavidh wrote:
| "Cyclically, with so much labor and education shifting online,
| the pandemic has unleashed strong pent-up demand for electronic
| products."
|
| It's not "pent-up" demand, it's new demand. It would be "pent-up"
| if people hadn't been allowed or able to purchase before, but now
| they are. The shifting of labor and education online, if it is a
| major factor at all, would be creating new demand.
|
| "The stockpiling that we saw in 2021 has also resulted in
| transportation bottlenecks."
|
| There are many reasons for the transportation bottlenecks, but
| stockpiling is a best a minor one, and more likely not really a
| reason at all. If anything, it works the opposite way, with
| transportation bottlenecks resulting in stockpiling, as buyers
| know they cannot assume it will always be available to buy Just
| In Time.
|
| "Structurally, electrification, such as the mass production of
| electric vehicles, and digitalization need semiconductors, mostly
| of the high-end variety..."
|
| Vehicles, in particular, need a lot more semiconductors that are
| _not_ "high-end", which is why Intel couldn't use its spare
| capacity to help out the auto industry as much as they wanted to;
| their fabs were actually too modern to make the higher-voltage,
| larger-dimension semiconductors that the auto industry needed,
| mostly made in older fabs.
|
| Ok, three factually inaccurate statements in a row, I am giving
| the rest of the article a pass.
| Nowado wrote:
| Their loss is my (consumer) gain or am I missing something
| important?
| bfdm wrote:
| Temporarily, perhaps. The risk is that without planning that
| oversupply leads to a period of greater shortage due to
| cancelled production, bankruptcy etc.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullwhip_effect
| rjsw wrote:
| It is only your gain if the oversupply is of chips that you
| want.
| rlt wrote:
| I'm guessing there will be an oversupply of fab capacity, not
| just specific chips.
| neogodless wrote:
| To give a real world example of how the chip shortage is
| affecting me...
|
| The vehicle I want to buy does not come with the chip for
| heated seats or parking sensors, because they simply do not
| have enough of them. You can buy that vehicle without those
| features, and at least with the heated seats, they promise to
| retrofit them "at some future date." All of the models that
| got made before the cut-off sold super quickly, and I'm just
| waiting to buy until the vehicle is complete at signing.
| dnissley wrote:
| Can't there only ever be an oversupply of chips that people
| don't want? Because if they wanted them they would buy them?
| Jtsummers wrote:
| > Because if they wanted them they would buy them?
|
| Only if they can afford them and can justify the purchase.
| People want many things that for various reasons they don't
| acquire. It may be cost (units would have to be sold at a
| loss to get down to consumer-comfortable pricing), it may
| be that it's part of a larger system. For me to get a new
| AMD CPU I'd also need a compatible motherboard and,
| possibly, different RAM (either for physical compatibility
| or to get an actual performance improvement, even if my old
| RAM "works" if it's sufficiently slow it's a bottleneck
| that makes the purchase not worthwhile to me).
| belval wrote:
| Isn't that obvious? If there is an oversupply of GPU, as a
| customer I win. If there's an oversupply of some niche ARM
| chip I might not win but I'm not losing either...
| xadhominemx wrote:
| I don't know if there will be an "oversupply" of GPUs,
| because now they are all manufactured at foundries and the
| chip companies can just cut their orders. But with Intel
| coming into the market, Samsung switching to TSMC, and TSMC
| putting in $120b of capex, the shortage should be
| alleviated pretty soon.
| acdha wrote:
| If there's an oversupply of GPU chips _and_ everyone builds
| them into products and sells them. There's a fair amount of
| demand in that specific instance but that doesn't translate
| into capacity for everything else and companies aren't
| going to be quick to lower prices.
| cplusplusfellow wrote:
| I'm just looking for the basic, "there are enough chips to
| make stoves and automobiles that I am wanting to buy" amount
| of supply.
| Nowado wrote:
| Yeah, not GPUs, maybe cars, surely fridges.
| xbmcuser wrote:
| This is about older nodes not the latest plus the expected glut
| is coming according to the article in 2024. A non paywalled
| link to the article
|
| https://www.businesstimes.com.sg/global-enterprise/chip-shor...
| WJW wrote:
| Oversupply means a few of the suppliers will not be able to
| sell their chips and might face bankruptcy, leading to
| monopolies in a decade or so when the pendulum swings back
| again. Don't worry too much about it though, it's difficult to
| predict the future and it's equally possible that the market
| will return to relative balance without overcorrection.
| xadhominemx wrote:
| There are not going to be any bankruptcies even in a severe
| oversupply situation. Chip manufacturers are much higher
| margin and better capitalized than in the past, and a lot of
| the riskier capacity expansion this time around has been
| financed by customers
| netcan wrote:
| This is probably true, but it may not mean any less
| consolidation.
|
| Consolidation is a fairly easy bet to place though from a
| 2022 POV, so I guess GP (and I) are predicting cold during
| winter.
| xadhominemx wrote:
| I can't think of any more major consolidation that can
| take place. Maybe within NAND, but for different reasons
| as there's not really risk of a long lasting supply glut
| in that market.
| thatguy0900 wrote:
| Governments have/may start seeing chipmaking as something
| of national security, right? So would they let a great
| amount of consolidation occur or will every continent
| have its own heavily subsidized chip industry
| cengo123456 wrote:
| spir wrote:
| Note that Ethereum is switching to proof of stake this year,
| almost surely before Q4. It's true that this upgrade has been
| coming for years, and it's also true that it's actually arriving
| this year (if interested, see https://eth2.news).
|
| After Ethereum switches to proof of stake, global demand for GPUs
| will plummet as GPUs are uncompetitive for BTC mining, and beyond
| BTC, ETH is by far the largest remaining proof of work coin.
| WheatM wrote:
| Animats wrote:
| _Note that Ethereum is switching to proof of stake this year,
| almost surely before Q4._
|
| Is there some way you can bet against that claim?
| spir wrote:
| Absolutely! Please see this Polymarket prediction market on
| "When will Ethereum switch to proof of stake?"
|
| https://polymarket.com/market-group/ethereum-merge-pos
| expicli wrote:
| Yeah, its not gonna plummet. Theres still going to be huge
| demand. PS5s and Xboxes arent used for crypto and theyre still
| sold out
| radicalbyte wrote:
| I wonder what will happen: Ethereum switching to PoS or Tesla
| having full self-driving.
| Melio wrote:
| What's the difference this time?
| spir wrote:
| Please see my other answer to a sibling comment
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30490897
| Melio wrote:
| Any insight why it was postponed?
| binarymax wrote:
| Rest assured there are many gamers who will pick up the slack,
| not to mention businesses who want them for training models.
| senko wrote:
| This. I've been planning to buy a new gaming rig for two
| years, but wasn't so much a priority that I would pay
| exorbitant prices for even midrange hardware.
|
| When normality is restored, I'll be happy to finally upgrade.
| spir wrote:
| I will be one of them :)
| MisterSandman wrote:
| The main difference is that gamers are consumers, while ETH
| miners use GPUs to make income. Even though gamers were
| buying scalped GPUs, I'd imagine GPUs going to back to being
| treated as a consumable (rather than something that generates
| income) would help prices.
| jedberg wrote:
| Companies using GPUs to train models are also using them to
| make money. They will pick up the slack the miners leave
| behind.
| jotm wrote:
| Aren't Quadros/FirePros with lots of VRAM better for that?
| Sebb767 wrote:
| But people who don't necessarily need it and/or don't make
| money with it won't pay insane prices for (ab-)used mining
| GPUs. It won't be insanely cheap, but definitely a lot
| cheaper.
| evolve2k wrote:
| When the time comes, for a casual gamer which popular
| etehrum mining GPU's would you be on the lookout for?
| spamizbad wrote:
| Right but what happens when another blockchain technology hits
| the scene that's trendy and happens to be PoW? People who made
| significant investments into GPU miners and the infrastructure
| to support them won't go away quietly.
| spir wrote:
| That's fair, what if another PoW coin gets really popular?
|
| The good news here may be two-fold
|
| 1) the existing group of public chains have matured greatly
| and their network effects are quite strong now. It is no
| longer so easy to start a new chain
|
| 2) virtually all new chains are PoS because it's understood
| to be significantly more secure and less expensive vs. PoW
|
| 3) public chains take years to grow, and right now, there is
| no PoW public chain on my radar that has a chance of
| generating nearly as much mining demand as Ethereum (and
| Bitcoin but ASICs)
|
| For those reasons, the idea of a new public chain appearing
| from nowhere and impacting GPU demand seems in practice
| unlikely to occur.
| atweiden wrote:
| > virtually all new chains are PoS because it's understood
| to be significantly more secure and less expensive vs. PoW
|
| PoS security relies on the integrity of the stake -- and
| the integrity of the stake relies on the "security" of the
| PoS system. It's an intractible circularity problem.
|
| Yes, a large sample of recent altcoins have shipped PoS,
| but this is no more relevant to a PoW v PoS security debate
| than a modern top 40 "hit songs" chart is to a debate over
| Beethoven v Bach.
| Havoc wrote:
| There are a handful of other PoW coins not far behind Ethereum
| so I wouldn't count on demand plummeting
|
| https://whattomine.com/
| spir wrote:
| Thanks, I hadn't seen that site.
|
| In my view, this site is strong evidence for the thesis that
| demand for GPUs will plummet, here's why:
|
| 1) If we tweak your link to sort by Market Cap, we can see
| the next biggest coin to mine after ETH is has only 1% of
| ETH's market cap https://shorturl.at/lxLS5
|
| 2) These smaller coins do not have the capability to
| automatically or naturally grow bigger market caps, trading
| volumes, and buy-side demand just because ETH switches to
| PoS. Mining profitability ultimately comes from a coin's buy-
| side demand, which is proportional to many things-- fame,
| developer activity, etc.-- and none of the PoW chains in that
| list are anywhere remotely close to "breaking out" and
| growing proportionally with Ethereum, or, say, Solana. How do
| I know this? Well, I'm an insider that focuses all of his
| time on ethereum and web3, you'll have to take my word for it
| :)
| rhn_mk1 wrote:
| As someone rather naive in regards to cryptocurrency, I
| don't understand what you're basing this on:
|
| > These smaller coins do not have the capability to
| automatically or naturally grow bigger market caps, trading
| volumes, and buy-side demand just because ETH switches to
| PoS.
|
| What would they need to cross that barrier? For example,
| don't all coins have the ability to manipulate trade volume
| by sending money between owned wallets?
| dataangel wrote:
| Sending money between two wallets you own creates
| _transaction volume_ not _trade volume_. The latter comes
| from orders matching against each other on an exchange
| and requires paying the exchange fees so it is not as
| easy to fake (you need the exchange itself to be in on
| it, or they take all your money in fees).
| mkr-hn wrote:
| Can you translate for people (like me) who don't know what
| all those numbers are supposed to represent? I can't make
| sense of it or relate any of them to GPU demand.
| ehsankia wrote:
| I don't understand much of the site either, but at a high
| level, my guess is that it's sorting crypto coins by
| computation required vs $$$. Right now ETH is at the top,
| aka for every flop you put it, you get the most return, but
| there are many others not far behind. So even if you were
| to eliminate Etherium entirely, there would still be plenty
| other that are profitable to mine.
|
| Why sell a GPU for a fraction of the price, when you can
| just switch over to another coin and make 50-90% of the
| money you were making still.
| trompetenaccoun wrote:
| > _and it 's also true that it's actually arriving this year_
|
| Do you have insider knowledge or just a quality crystal ball?
| spir wrote:
| I have been full-time on Ethereum for years, I'm a software
| engineer, and I have a relatively intimate knowledge of the
| specific milestones the community has been achieving and why
| that implies that proof of stake will ship this year.
|
| Here's an overview
|
| Dec 2020: proof of stake launched in production, but isn't
| yet used to secure ethereum, it runs in parallel
|
| October 2021: the last major upgrade to Ethereum before
| switching to proof of stake went live in production
|
| Today: proof of stake "Merge" testnets are live, all core
| teams are 100% focused on the merge, regular progress reports
| are nominal, etc.
| encryptluks2 wrote:
| People that care about PoS could have already invested in
| something else. The people stuck on Ethereum will boast about
| PoS coming soon, but if tomorrow they said they were going to
| wait for 5 more years they'd stick with Ethereum and talk about
| PoS for 5 more years without switching to a different PoS
| token.
| markus_zhang wrote:
| Hope I can finally pick up dev boards and chips cheaply...
| driscoll42 wrote:
| Where's the article? I click on the link and it gives a headline,
| picture and... that's it
| progval wrote:
| It depends on third-party requests which are blocked by uMatrix
| by default. Specifically, you need to enable JS from
| code.piano.io and experience-ap.piano.io, and XHR to
| c2-ap.piano.io; in addition to the first-party domain.
| adregan wrote:
| I suppose you have JS disabled? Just turned it off and could
| replicate your experience.
| taf2 wrote:
| If it means my designs can be ordered without multiple redesigns
| I'll take it :)
| atum47 wrote:
| Good, maybe then I can get the new xbox for a fair price.
| mkr-hn wrote:
| It looks like the plane used to move some EUV equipment may be
| damaged or destroyed, so maintain the hope! The supply problem
| could continue.
|
| https://twitter.com/AntonovCompany/status/149796783633704140...
|
| Of course, this is the least important thing to move in that
| plane and probably the easiest to find alternate transportation
| for.
| RONROC wrote:
| How is oversupply a "crisis" (assuming you're not carrying water
| for board members)?
|
| Would love to have a level headed conversation about this,
| assuming someone here can address, what is, in my estimation, a
| non-issue.
| koheripbal wrote:
| What you want is predictability and stability. The bullwhip
| effect of supply chain disruptions alternate between shortages
| and gluts, and they both cause economic damage.
|
| Having a glut of a product or resource destroys manufacturing
| capability as employees get furloughed, factories shut down,
| and talent is lost. ...it then creates a shortage when demand
| picks up and so on.
|
| Markets are good at reacting if the future is predictive, but
| if it is unexpected, then there is damage in both shortages and
| gluts.
|
| Importantly, the more complex and deep a supply chain is, the
| more unpredictable and magnified the bullwhip effect becomes,
| even when you expect gluts/shortages. This is because every
| participant in the chain attempts to cushion themselves from
| the shocks by stockpiling and timing their sales.
| RONROC wrote:
| In a perfect system, you are more correct than you give
| yourself credit for. This is not that. In case you haven't
| noticed, a GPU costs more than the rest of the components of
| a PC combined. And that's because of so-called market and or
| supply chain inefficiencies (which I'm supposed to, as a
| consumer, take on the chin).
|
| In spite of political, personal, or professional neglect,
| (don't care which one) chip companies are posting gargantuan
| earnings YOY and seem to be doing fine.
|
| On the other hand, my sibling can't afford a car or a non-
| pre-built computer.
|
| I guess it's not clear in your post, but who exactly are we
| looking out for here? The furloughed talent? The "market"?
|
| And regardless, how is that my problem?
|
| Again, I would love to have a level headed discussion about
| this, but please be honest about who truly loses in an
| oversupplied market.
|
| BTW, because I see this here a lot: just because the whole
| "it's more complicated than you think" rationale is not a
| commonly accepted logical fallacy, doesn't mean that it's not
| bullshit all the same.
| yccs27 wrote:
| In general, oversupply is bad for everyone because all
| suppliers lose money, but only the ones with deep pockets can
| survive - increasing market concentration. In this case, I'm
| not sure it hurts, since the chip market is already dominated
| by big companies.
| RONROC wrote:
| There we go brother! You're almost there!
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| A lot of people consider lean manufacturing a religion and
| can't seem to see that there are some holes in the plan when
| you go outside a nation and see that some countries just don't
| like each other and will use their country's businesses as
| political capital.
| RONROC wrote:
| I agree with you man and you would _think_ that would be a
| given.
|
| However, _the_ critical flaw of highly rational actors is
| that their actions always incur a reality tax, and, more
| likely than not, they 're nowhere to be found when the bill
| comes.
| blihp wrote:
| Oversupply is great for consumers but very bad for suppliers.
| Neither extreme is healthy long term. You generally want a
| balance between supply and demand so that suppliers have a
| predictable target they're aiming at and can expect a
| reasonable profit given the capital expenditures needed to make
| next generation products. If we go into a prolonged oversupply
| situation, that will be great for prices to consumers in the
| short term. However the longer it persists this will of course
| limit, or even eliminate, profits that can be made. As a
| result, companies will reduce production capacity and
| eventually R&D for their next generation products. This in turn
| will tend to increase prices with minimal product improvements
| longer term.
| RONROC wrote:
| I hear you man, but guess what, I'm not a supplier, so again:
| _qui bono_.
|
| You're argument assumes we have anything close to a healthy
| economy now. And in another world, you'd be right. However,
| that not being the case, your argument is moot at best and
| disingenuous at worst.
| hef19898 wrote:
| The bullwhip effect, the wikipedia page on it is pretty
| good, has nothing to do with the economy per se. I don't
| think we have seen it at display as big, as long and as
| global in my life time. My professional opinion is that a
| lot can simply attributed to disrupted supply chains and an
| overall bullwhip effect.
| blihp wrote:
| You're looking at it purely from the short term perspective
| of say GPUs, cars etc. as a consumer. Sure, a short term
| oversupply to drive prices back down to a sane level (or
| even below sane for a little while) would be a good and
| healthy thing. That's coming.
|
| However, what the article is talking about is the risk of a
| longer term oversupply situation at the foundry level. If
| that happens the result will likely be even more
| consolidation. The downside to you as a consumer would be
| lack of innovation and flat to higher prices over time.[1]
| Once you get below a handful of players in a market, the
| worse your options as a consumer get.
|
| [1] see Intel CPUs for much of the 201X's
| willis936 wrote:
| I don't find a transition from JIT to JIC to be very bad for
| anyone.
| guessbest wrote:
| Because fewer people click on articles that don't have crisis
| in the title.
| dusted wrote:
| of course it will, I've chanting that with some glee and
| happiness for a while :) Imma drown myself in ramz and gupz! :D
| Wanzy wrote:
| Wanzy wrote:
| megous wrote:
| Well, some capacity will be freed:
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/02/25/ukraine...
| neonate wrote:
| https://archive.is/ZPDnd
| Wanzy wrote:
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