[HN Gopher] AMD CEO Says It's Limiting Supply of CPUs and GPUs t...
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       AMD CEO Says It's Limiting Supply of CPUs and GPUs to Maintain High
       Prices
        
       Author : chazeon
       Score  : 25 points
       Date   : 2023-02-03 19:42 UTC (3 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.extremetech.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.extremetech.com)
        
       | mshake2 wrote:
       | Isn't there a risk of never selling your stock once the GPU is
       | seen as "previous generation" by limiting the supply
       | artificially? Or are they just not producing enough cards in the
       | first place? I don't really know what "We have been undershipping
       | the sell-through or consumption for the last two quarters" means.
        
       | wmeredith wrote:
       | So AMD is a luxury brand now?
        
       | goldtownjac wrote:
       | I think this headline is a bit sensationalized. Dr. Su's quote in
       | the article says nothing about the undershipping being "to
       | maintain high prices". Retailers are likely just not interested
       | in carrying large amounts of stock in a precarious market.
        
       | sokoloff wrote:
       | Why shouldn't they? Luxury car makers do it. Luxury watch brands
       | do it.
       | 
       | These are not essential goods; if they can make more profit by
       | selling fewer, I don't see a problem.
        
         | Pet_Ant wrote:
         | A lot of these are also used for productive purposes. I bought
         | a Threadripper to speed up compile times on my open source
         | project. If I was running a slower CPU that's a net loss to
         | society because I'd be less productive. Now, I can afford it
         | and did, but others cannot. It's just wasteful of potential.
        
           | gruez wrote:
           | Right, but if you can't scrounge up $1000 to pay for a shinny
           | new threadripper, how much productivity was actually lost?
           | Presumably less than $1000, right?
        
             | hajile wrote:
             | If developer time is worth just $50/hr, that's just 20
             | hours to pay for itself.
             | 
             | Pugetbench says 448 seconds for the Threadripper 3990 to
             | compile unreal vs 889 seconds for the Ryzen 5950X. That's
             | over 7 minutes saved every compile or just around 170
             | compiles to pay for itself.
             | 
             | If you do just 5-6 compiles per day, that Threadripper pays
             | for itself in just one month (not including any other
             | system costs).
             | 
             | Most devs are worth way more than $50/hr and the payback
             | time for them would be much, much shorter than that one
             | month period.
        
               | gruez wrote:
               | > If developer time is worth just $50/hr, that's just 20
               | hours to pay for itself.
               | 
               | Note that I'm not claiming that a threadripper provides
               | zero value to you. I'm saying that if it's providing
               | value to you, you can easily justify the price, which
               | puts an upper bound at how much productivity can be lost.
               | After all, if you're losing $5000 worth of productivity
               | over not buying a $1000 part, you'd be irrational not to
               | buy it. Therefore, any productivity lost is basically
               | capped at the cost of the part, which admittedly isn't
               | trivial, but isn't some huge loss either.
        
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       (page generated 2023-02-03 23:02 UTC)