IBM and Samsung Unveil Semiconductor Breakthrough
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Wouldn’t the difficulty just go up such that you’d need to expand the number of computers calculating hashes until the electricity usage again becomes the limiting factor?
Once a year or so I check on the prices of used miners to see if it would be reasonable to use one as a space heater. Payback period has never been low enough for me to be comfortable with it. (If you buy $300 of equipment and mining becomes illegal tomorrow, then those miners are worthless.)
doesn't matter, though; just buy a space heater if you want a space heater.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/24/business/china-cryptocurr...
The sunk cost here is my existing forced-air electric heat, which is already installed in my house and already turns 1 watt of electricity into 1 watt of heat, or the other space heater I bought ten years ago and can easily put anywhere I need spot heating. If the goal is turn electricity into heat and nothing else, then I am already well supplied with ways to do that.
It's sunk cost if you already have a miner and need a room heater.
What the sales people neglect to tell you is their efficiency drops precipitously as the temperature approaches zero.
Heat pumps are much more consistently efficient in their other configuration as an air conditioner.
Assuming you had already bought the mining rig, it would continue to function as a heater regardless of legislative changes, and act as a redundant system to your existing heaters to boot.
Bitcoin’s intrinsic value seems to be as a way of turning $100 of electricity into $1 of currency.
If you look at GPU mining, a single RTX 3090 setup (assuming you already have a computer to put it in) requires electricity cost below $0.05/kWh to have break-even in 1 year.
Could quickly phase out the less efficient hardware in the nearer term or cause a temporary stasis in energy use keeping it the same as now.
So you’ll want to keep innovating on all parts of the stack, consensus models, proof of work hashing algorithms that work orders of magnitude better on boutique lower powered hardware architectures (optical/analog is gaining interest), and municipal regulations
If operational expenditure decrease while capital expenditures stays constant, it could still cost the same amount of money to mine but use less electricity. A miner pays both for power and the mining rigs.
Just listen to what's happending in Turkey right now.
I’m not going to persuade you now, so I wont try. Put a pin in your expectations for the future and revisit this in a few years or a decade’s time. Look at whether any of the extreme outcomes you are predicting now came anywhere even close to actually happening, and why they didn’t happen. Look back now at your opinions in the past of what extreme outcomes would have happened by now. Has any of it come to pass?
Crypto in particular was supposed to have taken over as the payment method of choice, with near costless micro transactions funding amazing new businesses previously impossible. Instead it’s turned into a ridiculous ponzi cult, criminal financing network, and a way for wealthy dilettantes and rich world teenage gamers to collect imaginary fashion statements. It’s an utter farce and a complete betrayal of its founding principles and goals.
>...central banks aren’t knowingly creating inequality...
They're just inflating asset prices and protecting investor classes at the expense of the rest of the economy. Disrupting the price discovery mechanism comes at a cost.
Perhaps some here would propose that these activities come at no cost or are otherwise a free lunch.
https://www.google.com/search?q=revolving+door+wallstreet+fe...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerome_Powell#Legal_and_invest...
As for crypto, I am also disappointed. Many of the goals you listed have been accomplished technically. Unfortunately most people don't care. The speculative aspects trump the technology.
Many people don't want to believe that the whole money system is a zero sum game. But it is. Just because people can't observe any change whatsoever when they're watching the numbers in their bank account while the central bank buys another chunk of bonds or lowers the interest rate, (in fact with negative interest being forwarded to end customers, people can actually see), doesn't mean the central bank's actions don't have any consequences for them.
Just because there's a long and not exactly transparent path of connections between the value of some money in a bank account and the actions of a central bank doesn't mean the two are not linked in a very grievous way. Things exist despite being hard to spot/grasp.
> Many of the goals you listed have been accomplished technically. Unfortunately most people don't care.
Countries such as Lebanon or Argentina serve as examples for the obvious effect that beyond a certain level of inflation, people start to care. Turkey banned bitcoin but with inflationary pressure being as high as it is, the story is not yet over I'd bet.
Phew ... what else is happening when most (if not all) of this money is brought into the economy at the level of financial assets?
Do poor people get to see any of this money? Give me one example except for the US one time payment to citizens.
Easy conclusion, if poor people aren't seeing any of this additional money: higher inequality.
Another post here mentions the Cantillon Effect. If you haven't done so already you might want to read up on that.
> I’m not going to persuade you now, so I wont try. Put a pin in your expectations for the future and revisit this in a few years or a decade’s time. Look at whether any of the extreme outcomes you are predicting now came anywhere even close to actually happening, and why they didn’t happen. Look back now at your opinions in the past of what extreme outcomes would have happened by now. Has any of it come to pass?
Well, a few years (3-4 maybe) back only "conspiracists" (including me) were warning/worrying about the danger that loose monetary policy would inevitably lead to high inflation (in the long term). There were these economists/journalists trying to wiggle their way out of the simple (and IMO true) equation (additional money supply without according increase in productivity leads to inflation) by coming up with fancy concepts like modern monetary theory MMT. What do people in the US face right now? Exactly, high inflation. And no, it's not going to be temporary. Recently even Mr Powell, who'd very much prefer to announce otherwise, has stated that the currently higher (than desired) inflation level is _not_ expected to be oh so temporary. https://text.npr.org/1064478567
My conclusion: my worries were more right than what the majority of news/people claimed, who dismissed all of it as nonsense.
> Crypto in particular was supposed to have taken over as the payment method of choice, with near costless micro transactions funding amazing new businesses previously impossible.
True, bitcoin started out with this goal. At least that was stated, nobody knows exactly what Nakamoto thought when they developed the concept. Might have been different from what was explicitly stated for the sake of the thing gaining more attraction in the beginning than it would probably have, had they instead called it digital gold or similar.
> Instead it’s turned into a ridiculous ponzi cult, ...
Yep, for the moment it definitely has the characteristics of a Ponzi scheme. But that's not to say it has to be like this forever (I'm sure one can come up with lots of systems/things that have in the past started out with Ponzi characteristics to then develop into something different) ... were bitcoin to become practically ubiquitous (with no additional potential users left to join in because all of them already have) ... well, then the whole thing would either collapse (proving you right) ... or the price would simply flatten out at whatever number and remain in some dynamic equilibrium with (of course) a certain level of fluctuation.
> ... criminal financing network, ...
Not a very good argument. Bitcoin is definitely not (and most likely won't ever be) the system, that criminals prefer doing their dirty business with. Compare with cash.
> ... and a way for wealthy dilettantes and rich world teenage gamers to collect imaginary fashion statements. It’s an utter farce and a complete betrayal of its founding principles and goals.
Honestly, who cares and in what way does it harm you? As long as bitcoin delivers the service of being a more stable store of value than central bank issued currencies it'll be useful enough to ignore whatever nonsense people do with it.
Plenty of people like you were saying the same thing back in 2008. The huge stimulus would drive up inflation. In the real world it temporarily crashed below zero.
The inflation we have now has nothing to do with predictions from before the pandemic. We’re you predicting that?
> Not a very good argument. Bitcoin is definitely not (and most likely won't ever be) the system, that criminals prefer doing their dirty business with. Compare with cash.
Cash is seriously small time. All the big crime syndicates, especially drug cartels, but also people traffickers, phishers and ransom ware gangs user crypto heavily.
What you’re forgetting is that everybody is part of the same economy. You can’t have a world where companies collapse and workers thrive. If companies go down, their employees go down with them, and companies rely on finance. That’s what QE is aimed to prevent happening.
If I try to abstract what you're saying here, what comes out is: you don't see any hard evidence for QE directly (yet not necessarily promptly) causing inflation.
I assume we can agree upon the fact that apart from very few exceptions, in the last four decades just about all significant economies have seen massive increases in asset prices. See here: https://data.oecd.org/chart/6yZt
If the reason is not QE, then what else should have caused this?
I know, inflation by the official definition explicitly excludes things like housing. So to make it clear, when I'm using this term I mean not only the CPI with its basket of goods but also housing and other assets. No, this "definition" doesn't match the official inflation numbers. But still, it doesn't make sense to just use the official inflation number that excludes one of the biggest chunks of people's expenses when you want to describe what's happening to prices.
> Plenty of people like you were saying the same thing back in 2008. The huge stimulus would drive up inflation. In the real world it temporarily crashed below zero.
Yeah, "official" inflation has been pretty low from 2008 up to 2020 ... housing and asset price inflation, not at all. The prices are exploding.
Now there's people who just refer to the official inflation numbers to appease those who're worried about QE easing leading to rising prices. What they're doing is basically denying that rising asset prices will ever find their way through the chain of the economy down to consumer goods like food/clothes/whatever. But the rising prices do find their way through. Yes, it takes a good while but that's hardly surprising, because governments/markets/jurisdictions/societies/individuals/processes all have inertia and take time to react. But eventually they all react. Which means: inflation. Just a matter of time, not if.
> The inflation we have now has nothing to do with predictions from before the pandemic. We’re you predicting that?
I did of course not make a prediction back in 2015 that we would see significantly higher numbers of official inflation in 2021. But that's not the point. The point is that with continued QE, some time the inflation is going to happen. There's no way around it. That's what I am/was worried about.
> Cash is seriously small time. All the big crime syndicates, especially drug cartels, but also people traffickers, phishers and ransom ware gangs user crypto heavily.
Neither of us appears to have any numbers on this so this point is of little use.
> What you’re forgetting is that everybody is part of the same economy.
Not forgetting that at all. It's kind of synonymous to my claim that the monetary system is effectively a zero sum game.
> You can’t have a world where companies collapse and workers thrive. If companies go down, their employees go down with them, and companies rely on finance.
There are different kinds of companies. Some of which are quite far removed from the processes that actually generate the value. Say Blackrock for instance. Kind of like the hydrocephali of the economy. (Yeah, they have employees too they'd take down with them.) With the central banks' support they've done a decent job at making the whole world economy depend upon them, so they're holding states and central banks hostage now. If it weren't for that, they'd be pretty dispensable compared to the endless list of companies out there that produce actual value: fabric, food, plastics, metals, electronics, software, pharmaceuticals, and so on ...
I guess we disagree here ;-)
> That’s what QE is aimed to prevent happening.
Yeah, sure it is. It's not going to work in the long term though. Ever seen an exponential system retain its exponentiality through all time?
I say there's basically three possible outcomes for governments' increasing indebtedness: {A} More QE --> inflation --> monetary reform (somewhat likely) {B} Watering pot: central banks and governments supply money directly to people (not that likely) {C} Governments turn 180 degrees and start financing their budgets by imposing wealth taxes and such (rather unlikely)
Hooray, let's see what'll have happened in 10 years :D
creates reminder in calendar (set to 10 years) with link to this post
The UK government's furlough scheme which gave all people who lost their jobs to Covid 80% of their previous salary from March 2020 to September 2021.
Denmark's similar furlough scheme.
Germany's similar furlough scheme which will last over 24 months (it also used a similar scheme in the 2008 - 2009 financial crises.)
There's four examples.
You keep saying "central banks" while also talking as if the US is the only country in the world.
How and why will they do that? If WasteCoin were to become the dominant form of currency, all the shit that's happening with real currencies now would just happen with WasteCoin instead.
Except that it will also waste a fuckton of energy, laying waste (Heh!) to the environment all over the globe.
It's almost unfathomable what an utterly weird delusion WasteCoin proponents live in.
Havans are a proof of waste.
superbowl ads are a proof of waste.
But waste is proof. Proof is valuable (not a waste).
Bitcoin is around 1,000 pounds of CO2 per transaction. That's about a 1,000 mile journey for an average US car, or nearer 2,000 in Europe. For a single operation on a currency?
Is this cool with you?
I do not want to live in such a society. I do not want to order live in a society were rich people invest in wasted CPU cycles to proof how rich they are meanwhile scientist have problems getting their live changing studies financed.
"President Mugabe's son 'pours £200 champagne over his £45,000 watch he boasted he got because "daddy run the whole country" as he parties while Zimbabwe starves'" https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5062367/President-M...
Consider the Braess Paradox as an analogy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braess%27s_paradox It's possible that increased efficiency (more capacity) would incentivize a greater number people to mine until usage was higher than before - similar to how expanding roadways creates more traffic. Then again, there might not be the time for the problem to get worse before people realized that money is the bottom line, not conservation. Why bother with greener chips.. when it's faster chips that matter. That's one of the big problems with proof-of-work consensus. The game theoretics work against our survival interests.
The rest is just atrocious marketing smoke and mirrors from a zombie company that is essentially dead, but somehow manages to linger on as a shell of its former glory.
How soon could it be in production?
Doing some back of the napkin math on the remaining business, by revenue it is roughly 45% consulting, 40% software, and 15% hardware. IP revenue represents 1% ($626M) of its revenue. [2]
What does it actually do? At a high level, help companies deal with the complexities created in a world of heterogeneous infrastructure (data and AI across environments, common management/security, automation, etc.).
[1] https://techcrunch.com/2021/11/04/kyndryl-officially-launche...
[2] https://www.ibm.com/investor/att/pdf/IBM_Annual_Report_2020....
Disclaimer: I'm an IBM employee, but my opinions are my own and I'm just using public data.
The problem was trying to turn those inventions into something they could sell. Chip tech was sold to whoever they could.
VTFET is sub 2nm, on TSMC time table, assuming they use it, you get Nanowire ( GAA ) with 2nm in 2025, it normally get another generation of fine tuning and cost amortisation. So you are looking at 2029 ( 1nm ) for volume production at the earliest.
At one time this research was shared amongst members of Sematech (which is the origin of the current NanoTech center in Albany where this work was done). But about 10 years ago, Sematech broke up as companies decided it was cheaper and more secure IP-wise to "go their own way" (Multinationals Going Their Own Way - or MGTOW ;-) so TSMC started doing their own R&D. This is a large part of why they are currently ahead of everyone else.
https://www.sunypoly.edu/research/albany-nanotech-complex.ht...
The NanoTech Center currently is primarily a boutique R&D center for Global Foundries + IBM with other specific companies invited in as needed.
But there is a "convergent evolution" to this kind of work because the laws of physics are not arbitrary nor are random directions of successful R&D possible - it's a constrained problem so even in independence, solutions will be similar because the physics problems that arise are the same and thus the solutions are going to "rhyme". TSMC is already doing something similar but the process design (the only part patentable) is different.
This all the information:
"With new Vertical Transport Field Effect Transistors, or VTFET, IBM and Samsung have successfully implemented transistors that are built perpendicular to the surface of the chip with a vertical, or up-and-down, current flow."
The rest is marketing.
It is nice to see innovation. I hope they put it in production.
# of transistors / area is the closest metric to compare different processes against, which this should be a step up from the status quo.
It's not uncommon for chips to have < 80% utilization because they can't be wired more densely. Cache vs logic can be very different, and even within those things the circuit design and cell libraries and design rules etc can all make huge differences. One transistor could have 50% the switching time of another, or 2x the leakage, etc. And it's not only switching and leakage but a myriad of variables involved in devices - NFET vs PFET profiles, other non-transistor devices like inductors and capacitors, voltage limits, soft error susceptibility, electromigration resilience, etc. A given process may support 9T and 7T libraries (and more). Area scaling is not all equivalent either, broadly, SRAM, logic, and analog/IO may scale at different rates.
Different performance metrics also improve at different rates, are inter-related, non-linear, etc. A new process might be able to produce a CPU that is 20% faster or use 50% less power with a 20% area reduction, or using 20% less power might allow a 50% area reduction.
Process naming is not a big conspiracy to confuse people. Yes there's a bit of marketing and investor relations involved (probably internal politics too), but if you could only use a single number to describe a process, transistors/area is not any better than a made-up "goodness" ratio vs previous processes that we have now.
https://features.propublica.org/ibm/ibm-age-discrimination-a...
It is still ongoing with hundreds of ex-employers suing IBM as of dec 2021.