[HN Gopher] TSMC warns over deepening slump in chipmaking sector
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TSMC warns over deepening slump in chipmaking sector
Author : mfiguiere
Score : 86 points
Date : 2023-07-21 18:06 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.ft.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.ft.com)
| AYBABTME wrote:
| A year+ ago, the same folks were talking about the incoming
| switch from under supply to over supply, and the predictable
| outcome that we see today. None of those involved are surprised
| by this on the macro level, but when they put their short-term
| glasses on for the purpose of quarter-to-quarter reporting, they
| say stuff like "deeper slump than expected". Obviously at the end
| of the day, these folks are sleeping just fine, knowing and
| having expected this with >12m of warning.
| andy_ppp wrote:
| How can this be happening with an AI revolution needing an almost
| infinite supply of high end graphics cards?
| drcode wrote:
| Near as I can tell, because of the nature of the chip business,
| there is a limit on how fast they can pivot production towards
| a market segment that is seeing increasing demand (in this
| case, the AI chip business)
|
| So even assuming that there theoretically are enough purchasers
| of AI chips available to offset their other lost demand, it
| will take a year or two before they can fully serve these new
| customers and collect this revenue.
| andy_ppp wrote:
| Yeah I was thinking something along the lines of, we have
| factories setup to produce AMD CPUs on 4nm for 6 months,
| another setup for Apple etc. and if say Apple reduces its
| demand TSMC can't magically turn the AMD or Apple (etc.)
| setups into Nvidia GPUs that quickly. Also NVidia probably
| benefits from some scarcity so it might not be worth their
| while to order more?
| dforrestwilson wrote:
| https://archive.li/43GrJ
| abeppu wrote:
| To what degree does this also reflect the restrictions on China
| receiving higher-end chips?
| cs702 wrote:
| TSMC just warned the world of a 10% decline in chip revenues.
| Given that chips today are critical component of every phone, TV,
| laptop, desktop PC, server, vehicle, dishwasher, and _pretty much
| everything else_ , TSMC's warning suggests we're going to
| experience a significant global economic contraction soon.
|
| Hopefully I'm wrong.
| Analemma_ wrote:
| This is a 10% decline from the large _increase_ over the
| baseline trend that we saw post-covid when people had tons of
| disposable income. It 's just a return to baseline and no big
| deal.
| jrockway wrote:
| I don't think that's true. If my BOM costs go down by 10%, I
| don't need to charge any less money for my product.
|
| If Apple could build an iPhone for 1 cent, why wouldn't they
| still charge $1000 for it? They can say it's how much iOS costs
| or whatever. (And hey, use the extra profit to hire more tax-
| paying iOS developers, making iOS even more valuable.)
| HWR_14 wrote:
| Apple has moats around the mobile space far greater than the
| moats in, say, cars or washing machines.
| adamc wrote:
| The assumption is that the lowered revenue means fewer chips,
| rather than cheaper, less profitable chips. I don't know
| whether that is true or not. Might be a bit of both.
| sumtechguy wrote:
| In economics the closer you get your price to be MR=MC the
| better off your profit. If they did as you said more than
| likely they would be leaving money on the table. This is
| usually a fairly common intro economics problem as it can
| seem unintuitive to lower the price to make more profit. Now
| iPhones do have somewhat of a 'monopoly' effect. But only to
| a point. In a monopoly you want MC=MD.
| https://openstax.org/books/principles-
| economics-3e/pages/9-2...
|
| Apple falls in the middle of those two axioms. If Apple could
| pull of an iPhone for 1 cent there would be a flood of
| entrants into the market doing the same thing as making the
| things would be cheap and easy. At first some would pay the
| premium (pay for the name) but after awhile that premium
| would erode and it would seem odd to pay when you can get the
| same thing for wildly less money.
| mrDmrTmrJ wrote:
| Respectively, plenty of companies can build a smartphone
| for far, FAR less than the sale price of an iPhone. E.g. a
| $50-$130 Samsung Galaxy A03.
|
| It's Apples install base, app ecosystem, and social moat
| (iMessage) allows continued high gross margins on their
| hardware and locks competition away from their profit
| center. The sale price has very little to do with the
| marginal cost of production and a ton to do with a
| naturally occuring software monopoly.
| fshbbdssbbgdd wrote:
| That Samsung uses the 12nm node, so you could say it
| falls somewhere between iPhone 7 (16nm) and iPhone
| (10nm). Those are worth about $100 used. A lot of the
| cost of manufacturing cost of cellphone parts comes from
| upfront capital expense, which is paid off by new models.
| This allows a strategy of selling cheaper, lower-end
| models using that old equipment.
|
| Apple also pursues this strategy, but they don't push it
| nearly as far as Samsung. The cheapest iPhone, the SE 3
| at $430, has a 5 nm chip in it, which they only released
| two years ago. Apple just isn't willing to release a
| parts-bin device, because they have a high quality bar.
| This is part of a moneymaking strategy, but my point is
| you can't compare the A03 price to any current iPhone
| model.
|
| Apple's hardware margin is 35%, that is a reasonable
| estimate of the premium Apple is charging over a totally
| generic phone.
| esdott wrote:
| Typically, lower demand means lower prices - at least in the
| short term. I believe that TSMC is saying that demand is
| decreasing quickly and a supply glut will need to clear until
| it gets better. Just my two cents.
| panarky wrote:
| _> > If Apple could build an iPhone for 1 cent ..._
|
| ... then Samsung can also make a phone for 1 cent, and they
| might try to steal share by selling for $400, and some
| consumers would switch, etc.
| cjrp wrote:
| I think the point is why has revenue dropped 10% for TSMC if
| everything downstream is going gangbusters? Doesn't it point
| to a drop in demand for chips, and therefore the retail
| devices they go inside?
| gtirloni wrote:
| If downstream things have gone to shit already, why the
| prediction that a crisis will be in the _future_?
|
| TSMC's revenue grew too much during the pandemic. It's just
| normal it should contract when things go back to normal.
| cjrp wrote:
| Potentially this is a tipping point for the things
| downstream. Honestly I'm just thinking out loud here.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| During COVID, with chip shortages, everything downstream
| bought as many chips as they could get. Now they have
| stockpiles to work through.
| nyokodo wrote:
| > Doesn't it point to a drop in demand for chips
|
| Yes, but in isolation it isn't evidence of an economic
| downturn in general. It is evidence of the whiplash of
| consumer demand shifting during COVID from services to
| goods and back again along with the cost of retooling the
| industrial plant to match that demand. There's a range of
| ripple effects across industries that will be ongoing for
| some time.
| memen wrote:
| > If Apple could build an iPhone for 1 cent, why wouldn't
| they still charge $1000 for it?
|
| Cause in healthy capitalism, a competitor could step in and
| sell it for $999 and Apple would lose market share quickly.
| adventured wrote:
| > Cause in healthy capitalism, a competitor could step in
| and sell it for $999 and Apple would lose market share
| quickly.
|
| No they can't. You're neglecting the various moats that an
| entity like Apple enjoys with the iPhone.
|
| First you have to be able to actually build a similar or
| superior product. You can't do it. Elite of elite tech
| engineering companies like Samsung can just barely keep up
| generation after generation. The investment required to
| build your $999 competing phone is comically enormous. You
| won't even be able to get access to enough chips to do it,
| much less have the manufacturing capacity to deliver at any
| meaningful scale given the components.
|
| Do you have tens of billions of USD in cash ready?
|
| You need to build a brand that consumers desire, such that
| they'll even want to spend $899 or $999 instead of picking
| up the iPhone at $1000.
|
| Do you have another block of tens of billions of USD in
| cash ready, for marketing, brand building, advertising?
|
| You need an extraordinary logistics system globally.
|
| Do you have another block of tens of billions of USD in
| cash ready to build, deploy, refine your global logistics
| network?
|
| Apple has ~$114 billion in annual operating income, most of
| it (including its ecosystem) is riding on the back of the
| iPhone. If it could be done, somebody would take that giant
| pot of gold from them. Even if a competitor could take 1/4
| or 1/2 of that pot of gold, they'd move on it in a
| heartbeat. They can't do it, not even remotely close.
|
| And then time. It'll take you a decade to get there,
| absolute best case scenario.
|
| What Apple is reaping, is decades in the making, and
| required hundreds of billions of dollars in capital to be
| deployed over that span of time. Good luck.
| pdonis wrote:
| _> You 're neglecting the various moats that an entity
| like Apple enjoys with the iPhone._
|
| A world in which Apple could build iPhones for 1 cent
| would be a world in which those moats did not exist.
| jrockway wrote:
| Why? How does the cost of microprocessors and metals
| decreasing make programming easier?
| pdonis wrote:
| The cost of iPhones includes the cost of programming
| them.
| jrockway wrote:
| But you're saying that moats wouldn't exist if the phones
| cost 1 cent? Why? I'm claiming that the cost of the
| iPhone in that world is from the included software, and
| the included software is their "moat". Cheap parts
| doesn't give you a "blue bubble" on iMessage. That's what
| the end user is paying for.
| pdonis wrote:
| _> you 're saying that moats wouldn't exist if the phones
| cost 1 cent? Why?_
|
| Because if iPhones cost 1 cent to produce, the cost of
| _everything_ that goes into producing them would have to
| be trivial. Which means any competitor could easily do
| the same as Apple is doing.
|
| Of course that's not the case in our actual world; in our
| actual world, it would cost a huge amount of money for
| any competitor to do the same as Apple is doing. But
| that's my point: that very fact is _why_ it costs Apple a
| lot _more_ than 1 cent to produce an iPhone. Apple has
| expended huge costs on developing the product and keeping
| it ahead of competitors, and those costs amount to a lot
| more than 1 cent per iPHone. The high price they charge
| for iPhones is how they recoup those costs.
|
| In other words, in the hypothetical I was responding to,
| Apple _could not_ have done what they actually _have_
| done to make the iPhone a high end preferred product.
| Which means that all the moats that exist in our actual
| world _because_ Apple did all those things to make the
| iPhone a high end preferred product, could not exist in
| that hypothetical world.
|
| Does that mean the hypothetical is basically useless in
| understanding Apple's position in our actual world? Yes.
| That was part of my point.
| lnsru wrote:
| Many companies built stock over last years and stoped buying
| new semiconductors until stock is almost depleted. I am sure it
| will be fine, no contraction soon. Only semiconductor companies
| will suffer.
| HillRat wrote:
| Inventories are stacking up after the COVID supply chain
| crisis, so automotive and durable goods manufacturers are
| slowing down on input orders, even though demand for their
| products remains high. There's definitely a PC/smartphone
| demand slump (both sectors down around 10% YoY for Q2 2023), so
| add those two data points and factor in potential supply
| increases down the road due to CHIPS Act effects, and you're
| looking at decreased demand and increased price pressures for
| an uncertain amount of time. Given just how contradictory the
| broader market data is regarding the "soft landing vs
| minicession" debate, TSMC's specific revenue issues shouldn't
| be assumed to be dispositive.
| gargablegar wrote:
| We have been seeing a significant global contraction for the
| last year lol. It's still going.
|
| We just all riding on the post covid backlog and over order.
| ajross wrote:
| > Given that [...] we're going to experience a significant
| global economic contraction soon.
|
| What's with all the doomslinging in modern discourse? No, no,
| that's not now it works at all. There was a chip _shortage_
| just a year ago! Did that plunge us into recession? No, clearly
| it didn 't. Then it was _Inflation_ that was going to kill us
| all. And it didn 't either. Now all of a sudden we're swinging
| the other way with chips and have a glut, and... _now_ the doom
| will happen, I guess you 're hoping?
|
| No. This is a cyclic industry and it's cycling like it always
| has. A 10% YoY revenue drop isn't anything weird. I found a
| chart here: look at the bottom YoY numbers and see all the
| times they were in the red. Remember the unmitigated economic
| disaster of 2016? Me neither.
|
| https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/TSM/taiwan-semicon...
| sanxiyn wrote:
| Well, inflation is an actual danger (see Turkey) and Federal
| Reserve deserves credit for handling inflation well.
|
| I agree semiconductor is an industry well known to be cyclic
| and prophecies of doom are ridiculous.
| landemva wrote:
| > Federal Reserve deserves credit for handling inflation
| well.
|
| That is a stretch. They jacked rates on Trump, lowered
| rates for Biden, and in my opinion were forced to raise
| rates when the Ukraine money/power grab ramped up.
| sanxiyn wrote:
| "Forced" or not, they still raised rates. They could have
| done otherwise, which would have been disastrous.
| landemva wrote:
| They followed war events in a reactionary manner. It
| would be cheaper and transparent to set rates
| algorithmically. The Fed can stay in business by
| continuing to inadequately regulate banks like SVB.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > What's with all the doomslinging in modern discourse?
|
| Because public trust in the ability of governments to manage
| a crisis has gone completely fucking downhill, worldwide:
|
| - the US couldn't even manage to beat a gang of cave-living
| Islamist terrorists using kalashnikovs in 20 years, and had
| to flee the country in shame
|
| - we went through three years of a worldwide pandemic, then
| panicked governments acted like it was all over due to
| pressure by the far right - and yet, despite mounting
| evidence of _millions_ of cases of long covid and almost all
| nation leaders silently insisting on covid tests prior to
| meetings, for the citizens it 's a free for all for the
| virus, at the risk of disabled people and other at-risk
| groups. Governments didn't do anything to meaningfully curb
| the onslaught of propaganda as well.
|
| - compared to prior environmental threats such as CFC
| coolants or lead, no one is doing _anything_ meaningful (i.e.
| something that actually costs Big Money some wealth) against
| climate change. Instead, again, climate change denial runs
| rampant.
|
| - we've got Russia invading Ukraine in a land-grab and it
| took us a year of brutal slaughter, rape and terrorism to
| send a handful of fucking tanks, and fighter jets are still
| many months away. I'm not advocating to glass the Kremlin,
| but NATO could do way way WAY more to stop this shit.
|
| - China has been stealing Western IP for _decades_ and used
| obvious price dumping to destroy our economies, and yet our
| politicians and companies keep kneeling before Xi _despite_
| the constant Chinese saber rattling against Taiwan
|
| - housing prices and cost of living have been exploding for
| _years_ and no one cares, despite tent cities of homeless in
| every major warm US city and people defecating on the streets
| because they don 't have any safe place.
|
| - on top of all of _that_ (literal) shit, Nazis and other
| authoritarian politicians are back worldwide, to a large
| degree financed by the Kremlin, and guess what, politicians
| aren 't taking care about that either, instead they let their
| parties be taken over by them or refuse to fight and go under
| in elections.
|
| - ETA: And in the US, people will probably have the choice
| come next election between someone who should have retired
| from politics decades ago on the Democrat side and on the
| Republican side either someone who has incited a putsch,
| stole top-secret documents and hid them in a fucking toilet
| or someone who thinks it's a good idea to take on _Disney_ of
| all companies or to fight everyone who doesn 't think like
| him as "woke" and wants to eradicate them. JFC America what
| are you doing?
|
| So yes, it's completely rational for people to assume doom
| when politicians don't give us any reason to hope that the
| situation will improve. It makes more sense to prepare for
| the worst case because it's increasingly more likely.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| This is probably the most depressing comment that I've ever
| upvoted.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| Nothing but the truth though. For me the question is not
| _if_ we get a serious left-wing terrorist uprising out of
| all the shit happening at the moment, it is _when_.
| Personal guess it 's going to be either UK or German's
| environmental activists or Israel, with a serious leaning
| to the latter given that everyone over there gets a ton
| of military mandatory experience.
| landemva wrote:
| > NATO could do way way WAY more
|
| Where in NATO charter are they to interfere for a non-NATO
| country?
| mschuster91 wrote:
| We could have delivered tanks from our storages the very
| second the first Russian crossed the border, we could
| have delivered fighter jets, we could have done _a lot_
| without directly involving us into the war.
|
| Instead we got Biden being afraid of Republicans (most
| importantly the Russian asset that was the 45th
| President), our German Olaf Scholz being afraid of his
| own party and its close ties to Russia and the far-right
| and far-left and their even closer ties, and French
| Macron and Turkey's Erdogan both trying to act like
| they're kingmakers. Oh and we got Ukraine to agree not to
| use the pittances we send to hurt the Russians on their
| own soil.
|
| All while hundreds of thousands of civilians and troops
| died in Ukraine. What a disgrace - our hesitation cost
| real human lives for nothing.
| quenix wrote:
| At this point I just stopped listening to pretty much anyone
| regarding the economy. It has become plain as day to me that
| the whole field is kaput and that no one can really predict
| anything in this incredibly complex, multivariate chaotic
| system.
| daniel-cussen wrote:
| They should have charged much more much sooner. That was the
| problem. They jacked up prices 30% once after over a year when
| they should have been like, "Taiwan embraces capitalism, we
| have a monopoly in the surely insignificant niche of the most
| insignificantly sized transistors, we do not seek monopoly
| rents but we'll take your money if that's what we must do to
| let the system self-correct.". Basically turned their back on
| capitalism as a concept unto itself, presumably because the
| whole reason for being of shifting a business to depend on
| Asia, chips, or Moore's Law or in particular all three at once
| is very tight purse-strings n their being highly cost-sensitive
| n cost-concious. Which is no problem for TSMC given it alone is
| at the leading edge of lithography...which i don't believe in
| myself like as far as i can tell transistors are 25 nm gate
| length so should be called 25nm indefinitely, to me it's not a
| marketing term, it's a figure of merit that is accurate for old
| chips but not new ones.
|
| This nanometer matter is identical to a problem w sandwiches i
| had recently, only difference being scale. It led me to
| escalate when a local Subway(r), a sandwich shop, got out a
| bread for my sandwich n when asked to compare it to the other
| breads because i considered it to be too small, the loser
| fixing up my sandwich did magician tricks to impede my
| verifying that it was in fact a shorter sandwich. Did like four
| tricks, first comparing it to another short bread rather than
| the clearly longer control group i was referring to, smart at
| playing dumb, called him out on it, one time almost lining them
| up but offset so it looked difficult to tell, unlike aligning
| them which makes telling one is shorter than the other trivial,
| but i had seen that at a Subway(r) before n called him out on
| it, then aligning them but flopping out a piece of paper over
| it w clearly rehearsed slight of hand, n called him out on
| that, then said, alright, you got caught, double meat on my
| bread. N then he's like no, i can't, i have to go get you
| another bread instead, i was like no, no mulligans, you steal
| from me you pay double, penalties are inescapable given intent
| to transgress. There has to be risk-adjustment in Justice, no
| mulligans or they'll never stop trying to steal from you--n if
| you come to Chile you'll see exactly what i'm talking about.
|
| But this sub fixer didn't get the difference between can and
| may, _puedo_ or _debo_ (means ought to) or _tengo permiso para_
| which is how you translate the word may, usually saying " _No
| tengo permiso para hacer eso._ ", that's how you say "I may
| not." My Spanish is excellent too, top grades in the Spanish
| class, father was a college professor of Spanish Literature,
| got the highest grades possible in Spanish classes, i've lived
| in Chile 30 years now, but apart from the "may" and "can"
| confusion, which if asked in person i can spice up the story by
| telling you hhow this petty theft was resolved, i went pro at
| confronting such transgressions, no mulligans--they are
| systematic about such things in Chile, n for me it is essential
| to block hands reaching into my pocket or i can't do business
| here n help this country be at the center of the algorithms
| industry. It is also a matter of honor. So started by yelling
| he was robbing me, which i justified w security when they
| called security, which i waited for until they arrived, that
| was lots of fun counter-trolling, but i'm afraid these walls of
| text will intimidate readers if i law another row of character
| blocks, like bricks, on them.
|
| Point was, the advertising said 15cm. Metric system, which
| along w the book is one of the two main engines of modern
| wealth creation. Subway(r) could have advertised it was selling
| at a low price a "rather big sandwich" or a "nice large
| sandwich", or perhaps "a sandwich so large you'll probably feel
| full by the time you eat it", n that would have been fine, but
| they didn't because the metric system is an amazing asset in
| marketing because it is _verifiable_. N that brings me back to
| my point about lithography, n why i care little for the newest
| ones. They are doing j about the same thing as the sandwich
| fixer, lying through their teeth, w disclaimers fine but
| without refunds after being inspected under a microscope,
| purporting the gate length is smaller than it is. They instead
| ought to drop nanometer convention except to say the actual
| verifiable length the user will be able to confirm the gates
| measure in length given some statistical metric verifiable w
| microscopy.
|
| N then together w that, a density metric, that's fair, or brag
| how many transistors are on the chip, that's fair too. Nobody
| cared about lithography anyway until clock speed stopped its
| dramatic increases in the late noughts. It was all about clock
| speed then. It could also be about cores, or computers per chip
| in the case of the GA144, called nodes to save typing, but
| they're full-fledged computers in an 8 by 18 matrix, under
| 20000 transistors each, those are numbers too, it's j about a
| verifiable number to brag about. People want easily verifiable
| numbers when they're giving up their easily verifiable numbers,
| their money, in exchange. Or it's false advertising at best,
| theft at worst.*
| tim333 wrote:
| 10% decline over the previous year, which was a boom year due
| to shortages after covid.
|
| See this article back from distant Jan 23 for example
|
| "Timeline: causes of the global semiconductor shortage"
| https://supplychaindigital.com/top10/timeline-causes-of-the-...
| ajb wrote:
| This isn't necessarily representative of the economics of
| downstream sectors, because it's probably caused by the
| Bullwhip Effect[1] like the recent semiconductor shortage.
|
| "The bullwhip effect refers to a scenario in which small
| changes in demand at the retail end of the supply chain become
| amplified when moving up the supply chain from the retail end
| to the manufacturing end."
|
| [1] https://www.investopedia.com/bullwhip-effect-
| definition-5499...
| cs702 wrote:
| I certainly _hope_ you 're right. Keep in mind: TSMC is
| entrenched in a lot of markets characterized by short lead
| times (say, < 1 month), and a 10% drop is a lot more than
| anyone -- including the company -- was expecting. Sometime
| ago I recall seeing charts showing that changes in TSMC's
| annual revenues are highly correlated with measures of global
| economic activity such as changes in Apple's global revenues
| and changes in global GDP.
| ajb wrote:
| During the shortage lead time for many semiconductor
| products went through the roof, so it would make sense that
| there has been at least some stockpiling. Probably you're
| right that that doesn't affect top tier products which are
| the bulk of the revenue, because those are the ones that
| got preferential access to fab capacity. Whether the
| stockpiling affected a big enough fraction of revenue to
| cause this effect is not something I have access to the
| data to know, so like you I am merely hoping that this is
| the explanation.
| bbatsell wrote:
| Could you elaborate on what you're referring to? I'm
| certainly not an expert, but my understanding was that the
| vast, vast majority of TSMC's revenue comes from production
| of completely custom wafers on newer nodes, and I'm hard
| pressed to think of something in the industry with _longer_
| lead times.
| cs702 wrote:
| I was referring to lead time on orders for existing
| products, i.e., those for which TSMC already has
| manufacturing capacity online, like current iPhone chips.
| I wasn't referring to the time it takes to go from design
| to manufacturing!
| panarky wrote:
| In addition to the bullwhip effect, and the unwinding of
| stockpiling, there's probably some real reduction of
| demand, and that's probably mostly from China's failure
| to bounce back to pre-covid GDP.
| pwarner wrote:
| Very possible that this is a factor, it's very hard to sort
| out. I see execs and investors are nervous. Is it the
| bullwhip effect or am I seeing a real increase or decrease?
| You'll know looking back in a few years!
| willis936 wrote:
| That would imply there is a surplus somewhere, which there's
| not. There's a reduction in orders from a reduction in demand
| regardless of the state of the buffer.
| gorkish wrote:
| It's still the same effect. Supply doesn't have to
| overshoot. Computer chips aren't just stamped out
| instantly; a complex chip with many hundreds of process
| steps can take months to manufacture. The latency of
| design/revision cycle means manufacturers are always doing
| everything they can not to overproduce.
| panarky wrote:
| The chip shortage lasted longer than you'd expect because
| everyone from end users to intermediaries has been
| hoarding them.
|
| It's like the covid toilet paper shortage, even if you
| keep producing a thing at the same rate, stockpiling
| creates shortages which stimulate even more stockpiling.
|
| When that eventually reverses, expect a temporary glut.
| guestbest wrote:
| Their is a surplus of labor.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| Most consumer electronics don't need ICs built on cutting edge
| process nodes. Most of the global population of humans have
| more pressing needs than acquiring the latest gewgaws that can
| upstage last years models.
| cheriot wrote:
| In addition to inventories like other commenters mention,
| remember this is a capital intensive business. When chip makers
| collectively add more capacity than is needed, prices drop (ie
| revenue drops).
|
| It could also be "normalizing" demand as people shift spending
| from goods to services.
|
| The possibility space is much larger than global recession.
| cs702 wrote:
| I hope you're right. Keep in mind: TSMC is entrenched in a
| lot of markets, and a 10% drop is larger than anyone --
| including the company -- was expecting.
|
| Sometime ago I recall seeing that changes in TSMC's revenues
| are pretty highly correlated with measures of global economic
| activity such as changes in Apple's revenues and changes in
| global GDP.
| dragontamer wrote:
| This boom/bust is really obvious with regards to computer prices.
|
| I'm seeing 2TB NVMe PCIe 4.0 SSDs with 7000+ MBps under $100
| these days. Almost everything in the computer-world is on a
| significant sale.
| WhereIsTheTruth wrote:
| You made me check and I notice the same in my area, great deals
| indeed, thanks!
| dylan604 wrote:
| Have you used any of these sub $100 devices? I just took a
| look, and all of the names are vendors I have no experience
| with what so ever. All of the vendors I am familiar are above
| that price point. So, my immediate concern would be these cheap
| ones are made from chips rejected by the name brands, and their
| performance would be rejected by me after wasting the
| time/money on them.
|
| I was looking at NewEgg and not Alibaba/ebay/amazon
| thorncorona wrote:
| Lots of <100 2TB ssds on Samsung / Intel / Micron / etc.
| products.
|
| https://slickdeals.net/newsearch.php?q=2tb&searcharea=deals&.
| ..
| dragontamer wrote:
| > Intel
|
| Note: Intel is literally obsolete in terms of Flash. Intel
| sold all of their SSDs to SK Hynix, who is now selling
| those SSD-designs under the name of "Solidigm"
|
| So if you want a "modern Intel" SSD, look for Solidigm.
| Intel got out of this race in December 2021, so no "new"
| SSD (2022 or 2023 era) is from "Intel" branding, only
| "Solidigm".
|
| --------
|
| I'm more of a Crucial / Micron fan myself, but Samsung,
| Crucial, and WD (aka: Sandisk was bought out by WD) are all
| 2TB for under $100.
|
| But yes, I'm talking about the big-names, with high-
| performance (7000MBps+ suitable for PS5). The good stuff.
| GPUs, CPUs, HDDs, and Motherboards have also come down in
| price. Its entirely across the board though the SSD market
| is where its most obvious.
| silisili wrote:
| I have an ADATA 2TB in a PS5 and my work machine. These
| aren't fly by nights.
|
| They can be had for sub $100. Even the much lauded Samsung
| 980 Pro is dipping close enough to the same.
| adventured wrote:
| Assembling a new home PC, picked up a 2tb Samsung 980 Pro
| with a heatsink recently for $129 (I think it was $113
| without the heatsink at that moment).
|
| DDR5 ram is finally starting to get price reasonable as
| well.
| tylerfontaine wrote:
| I got a 2TB 980 pro with heat sink from Bestbuy last week
| for $99. I was astounded. No brainer upgrade for the PS5
| paulmd wrote:
| be sure to upgrade the firmware, 980 pros are known to
| die after a while.
|
| dunno why people keep paying this premium for them,
| there's other better options for less money, like HP
| FX900 or Team Cardea these days. And those companies have
| a track record of reliability and not... whatever Samsung
| is doing for the last 10 years.
|
| Like honestly these days Samsung rates below stuff like
| Sabrent Rocket for me. You're better off picking a random
| other product from a big-name brand with equivalent specs
| as long as it's not a Samsung... the "SSD monty hall
| problem" if you will. Simply by switching, you improve
| your odds.
| dylan604 wrote:
| I picked up a 2TB 980Pro and installed it into an
| external USB-C chassis from SSK. I now have extremely
| fast external storage to edit from on the go without
| filling my internal system drive with crap media footage.
| At ~$100, that enough to have one per project and avoids
| the "which drive" question. It's now, get the ProjectX
| drive, or get the ProjectY drive. It's the happiest I've
| been as a mobile editor.
| hamandcheese wrote:
| A 2TB Western Digital SN850x, a near top of the line SSD, is
| $99 _at Best Buy_.
|
| https://www.bestbuy.com/site/wd-black-sn850x-2tb-internal-
| ss...
| shmerl wrote:
| I noticed that too. What does it mean? That demand is sinking
| or that costs are going down?
| dragontamer wrote:
| Computer parts are always high-margin. They're made out of
| purified sand after all, the raw materials of chips is
| excessively cheap.
|
| The ultimate price that consumers pay is very much related to
| demand and less about costs. The economics of chips is very
| interesting: its very expensive to design and develop a chip.
| But making additional copies of chips (or mass producing any
| design, really) is extremely cheap.
|
| -------------
|
| So yes, computer parts will go up in price mostly in reaction
| to demand. And they'll go down in price mostly in reaction to
| demand.
|
| The long-term investment into computers is not guaranteed
| however. It takes $Billions to design a modern chip, which is
| the hard part in practice. To run a computer company means to
| sell enough chips to fund the next generation. But for any
| given week or day of the year, the price of those chips can
| be whatever anyone feels like... really.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > Computer parts are always high-margin. They're made out
| of purified sand after all, the raw materials of chips is
| excessively cheap.
|
| The purification and especially the lithography (aka making
| actual chips out of a silicon disk) is what is expensive.
| The machines are _pricey_ as fuck - a single line from ASML
| alone costs 200 million dollars, and that 's just the
| machines for the lithography, not including the machinery
| that makes the ultra pure monocrystals, that slices them,
| or that cuts and packages them, or the cleanrooms and the
| remaining support infrastructure. Or the extremely
| specialized staff you need to actually operate them.
|
| And it's a ton of money involved with _very_ long lead
| times - say you 're TSMC, you get an order for a batch of
| chips, and even if you had capacity starting tomorrow, the
| 700 steps to the final product take three months [1].
| That's a massive amount of capital to be stuck for months,
| and errors can waste all of that.
|
| [1] https://www.seattletimes.com/business/technology/three-
| month...
| tschwimmer wrote:
| Got a link/model number? I'm always down for a new drive.
| dragontamer wrote:
| There's lots and lots of 2TB drives under $100 available.
| Just picking one that I know of:
|
| https://www.westerndigital.com/products/internal-
| drives/wd-b...
| FredPret wrote:
| Makes me wonder why I bother with anything in the cloud at all!
| mschuster91 wrote:
| Meanwhile, Apple charges hundreds of dollars at purchase time
| for 256GB more storage. And it's non-upgradable on top of that.
| hdjjhhvvhga wrote:
| Sometimes I feel they are just testing our limits. Same with
| iPhone price increases. I guess they are going to continue
| until the net profits decrease.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| Well, if they continue on that path the EU will mandate
| upgradeable storage next.
|
| I get why they do it though, my 2022 MB Air is _serious_
| competition against my work 2019 16 " MBP. Far superior
| battery life, similar display quality (WTF that notch
| though), feels just as snappy with IntelliJ, 200+ Chrome
| tabs and Docker, and all of that despite just 16 GB RAM. No
| way to do that unless you got _fast_ storage directly
| adjacent to the CPU so users don 't notice swapping.
| manderley wrote:
| The SSD isn't all that fast with the Air, though.
| 7373737373 wrote:
| We have to counter with even more resource hungry and
| inefficient software of course
| Hamuko wrote:
| I don't really know how to trash the SSD in my software.
| vvanders wrote:
| Flash wear says hello.
| kccqzy wrote:
| Run something like Chia.
|
| (Obviously not an endorsement.)
| CameronNemo wrote:
| Cache videos on disk _aggressively_
| xw4002 wrote:
| I don't really know what software you write, but trashing
| flash from software is a thing.
|
| https://www.tomshardware.com/news/flash-memory-wear-
| killing-...
| kylehotchkiss wrote:
| It sounds like we need to port more software to Electron
| jjoonathan wrote:
| o7
|
| I'm doing my part!
| dylan604 wrote:
| I have my Windows installer raring to go
| jjoonathan wrote:
| Real talk: ever since I put Windows and Linux on separate
| SSDs, rather than simply separate partitions, they
| haven't killed each others' bootloaders _once_. Best $100
| I ever spent.
|
| My second tip for solving incompetent software with
| redundant hardware: TOSLink -> 1Mii Bluetooth Transmitter
| to avoid the catastrophic linux bluetooth stack. It's
| brilliant. TOSLink = no buzzing from inadequate shielding
| next to digital lines (or "AI audio" noise floor massacre
| or popping or...) and no software bluetooth = OS can't
| screw up pairing _and_ that OS switching can 't screw up
| the pairing. I did this in a moment of rage after the Nth
| time dumping hours into yet another linux bluetooth issue
| only to find that someone had submitted a patch years ago
| but project management hadn't reviewed the patch for a
| year and then banned the person who submitted the patch
| for complaining that nobody was reviewing his patches >.<
| sgtnoodle wrote:
| I have windows on a separate SSD, and grub still stops
| working whenever I update my motherboard firmware...
| jjoonathan wrote:
| Condolences. I wish I had a second trick for you but I
| don't.
| sgtnoodle wrote:
| At least I can fix it from Windows, because it's just
| some uefi parameter that gets borked. I have the command
| in a text file on my desktop.
| ykonstant wrote:
| Any specifics about the second paragraph anecdote? It
| seems like a serious scandal.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| The sorry state of Bluetooth on Linux is well known at
| that point. Android had to roll their own stack because
| the standard BlueZ on Linux is a fucking _pain_.
| jjoonathan wrote:
| Hmm doesn't look like I wrote it in my journal but yeah,
| it was pretty gross. The reason given for the ban was
| some swearing in the message, but to my intuition the
| profanity was pretty tame, well-deserved, and ultimately
| just an excuse.
|
| I do remember the bug: Bose headphones have a low quality
| mode and a high quality mode (low quality frees bandwidth
| for microphone and maybe latency), and the linux
| bluetooth stack defaulted to the low bandwidth mode so
| aggressively that even if you changed the script to set
| high bandwidth mode it would immediately set back.
|
| I have no idea if the bug is fixed because this happened
| in 2020 and I haven't thought about desktop bluetooth
| since 2020 because TOSLink->1Mii Bluetooth Transmitter
| solved all my problems with it.
| gavi wrote:
| except for H100s from NVIDIA. Waiting for them to go down in
| price
| gtirloni wrote:
| They are in a separate bubble right now.
| _hypx wrote:
| That's entirely consistently with Moore's Law in NAND chips. I
| honestly think they were gouging us by not dropping prices
| earlier.
| Kye wrote:
| I'm holding out for $100-200 8TB versions before I fill out the
| empty slot in my laptop and max out the RAM. Having all my in-
| use video, samples, and Kontakt libraries on-board would make
| life a lot easier.
| djbusby wrote:
| Recently found a 4TB Samsung for ~200 USD
| christkv wrote:
| Good hopefully the prices will slide back towards pre pandemic
| levels making it more affordable for people
| bradleyjg wrote:
| Houses too ...
| dylan604 wrote:
| i'd be happy with a car
| foobarian wrote:
| I wouldn't mind a Nvidia RTX 3090.
| dylan604 wrote:
| I'd prefer that Mazda RTX 3090
| radicalbyte wrote:
| ..and a 4090 for the 1000 EUR it should cost, not the
| 1900 EUR..
| AYBABTME wrote:
| If anything, houses are going to stagnate until inflation
| catch up. No politician will want to sit in office while
| overseeing a nation-wide collapse of property value, this
| would tear the fabric of society too much. People can stomach
| making a stagnating investment, but they can't stomach making
| an investment that loses value, especially not when the
| investment is touted as a no-brainer and basic life goal
| investment by everyone (the American Dream).
| seydor wrote:
| houses need to reverse decades
| cloverich wrote:
| The last few years in particular have seen a dramatic rise
| in housing prices[1]. Reversing even a few years would
| dramatically increase affordability for many people.
|
| [1]: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MSPUS
| karmicthreat wrote:
| Yea, but it would probably put many people underwater on
| loans.
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| This countries middle class will turn into single issue
| voters if housing prices ever go down. Politicians are too
| scared of them to let it happen.
| panick21_ wrote:
| You don't heal 50 years of bad urban planning and bad housing
| policy in a short time.
| bradleyjg wrote:
| The last three years make the run up to 2008 look like the
| salt flats. There's a long term issue but an immediate
| crisis.
| andrewcamel wrote:
| Do they report the % of revenue from AI / data center chips vs
| all others? Or is there a way to derive it? Surprising to hear
| the slump given what we're seeing in AI-driven GPU demand. I
| guess that's just not as meaningful a portion of the TSMC
| business as I would've thought.
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