Global chip shortage threatens production of laptops, smartphones and more

That's true, it really doesn't immediately mean that. Over time, should the regional spend patterns persist, it would in fact mean that in dollar terms. Edit: Perhaps should have said 'will be'.

It's difficult to nail down the breakout of production regionally, because, for example, the US has 85% of the global semiconductor sales, but only 44% of that 85% are fabricated in the US. Here is the 2019 breakdown from Semiconductor International Association[0].

In unit terms, it could be quite different since there are so many low-value chips made on legacy equipment that has been depreciated.

[0] https://www.semiconductors.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/20...

I guess assuming linear correlation between spend and capacity?

Assuming that fab equipment has a relatively flat price in terms of production capability, it will be true over time. These are the places that purchase 85% the equipment, the equipment produces chips, so these places produce 85% of chips. Of course, some of the equipment will yield higher or lower chip outputs than others, and some of it will be shipped/resold elsewhere, but with large geographic and time scales, the output percentage will tend toward the capital spent percentage.

I wouldn't be surprised if the volume is actually bigger if you count not the money value, but wafers.

The ROI calculations for a nuclear power plant are very different though, in terms of the dollars per gigawatt-hour that will be sold to the grid over many years, for the total expected life span of the power plant.

Usually because they're built with some extreme form of government subsidy, or the fully loaded cost of a nuclear power plant is not taken into account in the $/GWh, such as eventual storage and disposal of nuclear waste at a government-run, government-funded facility.

No, it doesn't include accident remediation or dismantling that plant. So start by finding a radioactive storage facility (oops!), then triple the cost.

Chernobyl and Fukushima will cost about $1 trillion each ... for just the first 100 years.

We'll, it will take a decade, but this is one of the few European projects I believe might actually work. It's a well defined goal (fab chips) and the winners of the contracts is more or less predetermined (AMSL, etc). That's much less fluffy than "we're going to build a system of standards so that Europe can build a federated cloud".

AFAICT, all current Pi models are assembled in Wales, UK, at a Sony manufacturing plant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56B0P5WdAGQ

The parts, of course, come from various places.

If you mean the SoC, the latest model is fabricated on a 28nm process. This is a relatively ancient fabrication technique (about a decade old) which is widely available from several contract manufacturers.

Their greenboards say MADE IN THE UK, but the chips themselves are all Asia I think...

Not really. As the article points out, this is about chips coming out on older (8" being "older" is funny) fab technologies.

There are three major prblems:

1) Nobody holds inventory.

This is the primary root of all problems. Because everybody is on just-in-time inventory, nobody can absorb even the slightest shocks. Maximally efficient is minimally robust.

2) Semiconductor industry consolidation

The semi companies have been on a competition buying spree over the last couple of years. There's no need worry about a competitor holding inventory and winning a contract from you if you've bought them all out.

3) The "minimum volume" of a chip run through a fab is enormous.

An 8 inch wafer is about 32,000 mm^2. If your chip is 2mm per side (pretty big for "popcorn" type chips), a single 8 inch wafer produces 8,000 of them. If it's 1mm per side, you've got 32,000 of them.

You probably won't produce less than 10 wafers at a time.

So, that means your inventory goes from dead 0 to roughly a quarter million in a single whack with an 18 week lead time (and I'm just counting wafer starts--I'm not even talking about testing and packaging resources getting choked). And most projects never reach a quarter million in volume--and the ones that do generally blow WAY past it in a hurry.

Good luck managing that inventory flow.

Samsung should be good enough for anything but the super cutting edge (TSMC "5nm"). The Nvidia 3000 series GPUs for example are definitely the most powerful GPUs ever built and Samsung fabbed those.

Higher risk strategies are necessary in some industries super competitive industries. You play it save and your competitor takes the risk and they put you out of business before the rare event happens. If you both take the risk, then when the rare event happens you both are screwed equally and aren't out of business.

Combine that with the evolution of an industry (safe players dying out) and it's another dynamical systems thing. Industries get riskier and more coupled and more efficiently tuned to normal circumstances then blow up.

Lean is quite a broad practice that goes way beyond inventory management. Also, the Lean software development methodology is very different from the Lean process management one.

Anyway, yes, all those things are tools that should be used with an understanding of their positive and negative impacts (even Scrum has some positives...), not something undiscerning managers impose despite the realities of the field.

And if you go read Deming, the guy that created most of what goes into Lean (production, not software development) and JIT, he has some very interesting opinions on undiscerning management.

It's not "lost", it's a hedging tradeoff.

I'm honestly amazed at the PC component market for the past decade. The Thailand flooding that messed up HDD production, and crypto mining jacking up the price of GPUs, are just two examples

> SSD prices are amazing

They've been pretty much flat for the past 18 months. I've been wanting a 2TB SSD since 2018 and I've been watching the price sit stagnant at ~$250 canadian since june 2019 (dropped from ~$600 in the year before that).

I do think logically, if supply is ample (greater than demand) than the return on scalper investment may drop below the point of being worthwhile. Transaction costs and the risk of no longer being the preferred direct retailer could result in scalping losing you money. As long as demand readily exceeds supply, having the in-demand item gives you the power to collect a greater price on that item.

If it's evenly matched, scalping would likely be a minor, potential problem, but not to the scale we're seeing on all of these gaming items.

The existence of scalpers implies demand outstripping than supply, so it’s the same thing.

I'm humbly trying to upgrade from an i5-4670k to an i7-4790k (both of which are 7.5 years old) and it's a steal if you can find one for $150 + tax used on ebay. Madness.

In stock GPU selection at some European retailers:

OverclockersUK: 5700XT, 1050 Ti, 1030

Komplett.ie: GT 1030 and some random Quadro

computeruniverse.net: 1650 Ti, GT 710, RTX 3090 (for $2400)

scan.co.uk: Teslas, Quadros, GT 1030, GT 710, GT 210

That's it. No other RX 5000, no RTX 2000, no RTX 3000, no RX 6000.

So that's two of them don't even have gaming GPUs in stock, as an entire product category, and the others you get some last gen low end cards and one retailer with a 5700XT. It's a little more noticeable here.

I tried to order a custom desktop with a rtx2070 this November from a dozen sellers. Everyone said they had problem with their own suppliers and I should expect to wait until mid January or buy at something like 800 euros for that card. Insane (I just took a xbox series s instead).

> This seems like a huge failure to correctly price products if there are actual shortages and people standing in line

Apple can’t afford the optics of launching a product at one price and then halving it a few weeks later.

There’d be angry op-EDs in Forbes, and the HN threads would be longer than the queues.

In Japan, a notorious and No1 import agency called "ASK" does this operation for video cards. They sets higher prices at launch (3060Ti/3070 is 30%-40% expensive than US' MSRP) and finally decreases the prices. As a result, now we can easily buy any 3060Ti/3070, and 3080 if you don't choose brand, but expensive. What's interesting here is that sold price in Japan is sometimes far cheaper than scalper's price in US.

Companies take a big brand hit if they increase prices to match their low output. Adidas, too, can sell Yeezys for $1000 a pop, but chooses not to. It also helps keep the hype for the products up.

I disagree, the latest consoles have a historically weak launch lineup and don't run the full steam library, mods and all. On a compute per dollar comparison, sure they are a fantastic deal, but in terms of gameplay experiences per dollar they don't do nearly as well. They are like locked down budget computers, and it's almost as hard to get them at msrp as gpus too.

Here's a much more nuanced view: https://www.pcworld.com/article/3596551/microsoft-xbox-serie...

I'd say I agree it's a terrible time to build a high-end PC system. But I'm also saying that based on idle searches for components. I bought most of my PC parts in April 2019, and my (mid-range $300) GPU in spring 2020, with no issues with availability.

But it seems like motherboards are 25-100% more expensive now, and we are still waiting on $200-300 graphic cards from this generation.

I do think, though, that comparing a relatively single-purpose item like a gaming console to a general purpose desktop computer is also going to have pros and cons on both sides.

I'd much rather be shopping for mid-range (or last generation but still quite performant) computer parts than trying to get one of the consoles right now.

A PC is used for much more and has much more expansion capabilities. Not to mention my PC is better than any console even though the GPU costs as much as a retail PS5. If I was on the console upgrade cycle I could wait until PS6 to upgrade my computer. That's a portion of the PS4 cycle and all of the PS5 cycle for ~$1200 (no need to upgrade storage and other accessories for a new build).

People on the high end could even wait 2 console cycles to refresh.

Indeed. I’ve considered selling mine though and buying one again when it all gets cheaper at some point.

The 30 series was also just a much bigger jump in performance for price than the 20 series represented over the generation before that.

I wonder if yesterday's technology still keeps its value better because of this. I sure have a lot of electronics.

Microelectronics, and electronics

But just in case you need monitor for someone ;) check Dell P2214Hb - it is quality IPS, fast and flicker free! A lot of off lease units for $70.

Don't know what the OP was doing, but schools operate with different rules for licensing. Some scenarios that aren't possible for individuals or enterprise are possible for schools, depending on the agreements in place.

Mostly Windows 10 - supports even 32-bit CoreDuo, all edu software works, staff knows it. In EU you can buy second-hand software licenses legally. Some schools participate in volume licensing schemes with MS too.

But I also install Ubuntu on some specialized "workstations", e.g. pendrive/Internet terminal laptop connected to beefy old laser copier/printer where CUPS PCL works with zero drivers. Other use case: jukebox laptop for music classes :)

Mostly likely Windows because most education software is written for it and most education places get it basically for free.

The article references it, but I can’t really go into more detail (contractually, that is).

I would imagine the extra power use probably isn't enough to outweigh the environmental costs of manufacturing new hardware, at least for your average consumer device. For servers, maybe the higher power usage is sufficiently high for it to be beneficial?

I got a flat this summer. Brought my bike in to my local shop to have them fix it. They said "I hope you have a spare because we don't have tires, and it may be two months before we get any". I did have my spare that I had brought in with me. And I felt good about giving the shop some service works because I noticed right away that they had almost no bikes in stock.

That's my point is that it's so concentrated it takes very little to completely disrupt the entire industry. The question to me is are the increased costs of diversification worth the risk of temporary (or maybe permanent) disruptions to manufacturing.

Then again, when I studied political science and economics there was a common belief/theory that this sort of increased interdependency between countries (globalization) would decrease the likelihood of war and increase opportunities for democracy. So maybe it's a good thing.

5nm

Sounds like you are doing okay, that 3950x is pretty great and will re-sell for a decent amount on the second hand market. Good luck with your upgrades!