5 ms·

"The rip-offs of common powertrain control module 4 units relate to the ongoing shortage of microchips" So how long does the microchip shortage continue?

by r00fus 4y ago

Syonyk 4y ago
> So how long does the microchip shortage continue? Warning: Paid Pessimist point of view (I've done computer security for far, far too long). Indefinitely. It doesn't recover. Because (modern, leading process) microchips are the sort of globe spanning supply chain problem that works great, right up until it doesn't. Coolant for some laser is made in this country that's at war. Some critical surface processing chemical is made by that company that had a major power outage and their facility caked up with goo that has to be scraped out. Some semiconductor fab has a worker shortage. Or a water shortage. Or got blown to pieces when some other country tried to invade (TSMC would be nuts if they weren't wired with demolition charges and quietly sure China knew it). There will always be "something" that interferes with the smooth generation of chips. And there will be some supply, but not as much as people hope for, and they'll be rough around the edges, and, besides, you can't get those surface mount resistors in any quantity right now for your design. And eventually, this starts impacting the funding of the companies working on the newest, latest and greatest process tech, and they don't have the money to continue pushing forward. We're long past the point when anyone but the most well funded multinationals can even consider a leading process tech foundry - and there are only a few companies on the planet who can make the hardware for it. The supply chain for foundries is just as bad as anything else, if you have a couple billion to drop on one. And at some point, enough people will find workarounds that don't involve modern silicon that (at least in my arc of the future) demand will drop, so you won't be able to justify the investment in a leading edge fab much beyond the current stuff. Throw a solid recession/depression in, and consumer electronics spending is likely to drop substantially - so there goes a lot of the leading edge demand for some while. The question, "How much damage can an efficient, just in time optimized global economy take before it fails?" has been discussed for many, many years, and the pessimistic point of view as of now would be, "Less than it's taken and is going to take in the next few years." And at some point, things like "food" and "basic energy" are more important to keep working than the latest consumer toys. I'm entirely aware this doesn't paint a pretty picture of the future, and it certainly doesn't involve us going to the stars in any quantities, outside perhaps some token boots on Mars. But it's the sort of ragged decline we've seen throughout history, and, I'd argue, that we're firmly in the middle of right now. "Rattling down the backside of the arc of empire, undergoing catabolic collapse" seems to better predict things than a lot of other mental models lately.
- cowtools 4y ago
  I mean it's not like most consumer hardware has to be on the latest nodes. The current hardware is more than enough for any consumer applications I can think of. Maybe just need to reuse more hardware. Standardize and commodify replacement parts for mobile devices like framework/fairphone. Reduce the amount of IoT crap in toasters/etc. Use multiseat instead of thin clients. Upcycle old computers.
  - Syonyk 4y ago
    > I mean it's not like most consumer hardware has to be on the latest nodes. The current hardware is more than enough for any consumer applications I can think of. Electron says, "Hold my beer!" I would love to see lower software requirements, more long lived systems, etc. Meanwhile, Microsoft is obsoleting... basically the last decade+ of hardware for Windows 11. It's an uphill fight.
    - zdragnar 4y ago
      Meh, I keep multiple electron apps, node processes, and chrome windows and tabs open at the same time, and they're really not at all CPU intensive (except for node running tsc builds or tests). It's the RAM usage that is annoying, and even that isn't too terrible. Edit: of course, I'm running swaywm on linux, so my environment is generally pretty light as it is compared to Windows.
      - Syonyk 4y ago
        I generally try to use ARM small board computers as much as possible. They really struggle with running a bunch of Electron stuff at the same time, and while you can reasonably use some modern websites on them, it's amazing just how much absolute crap you can get rid of with NoScript/Ghostery/etc, and still have a perfectly functional website. My massive, powerful, "Do absolutely everything!" computer in college was a dual Pentium III 866, with 768MB RAM. And a hex core, 2GHz ARM box with 4GB RAM can't do half as much, because of just how heavily bloated software is. I still write code, browse the web, chat with people... and I need radically more resources because that's what software development has decided is easy. Meanwhile, stuff like Hexchat for IRC just... uses no resources and works as wonderfully as ever.
lostmsu 4y ago
Ever played Factorio?
- adhesive_wombat 4y ago
  My money is on the semiconductor shortage bring resolved way before The Factory has finished growing.
rasz 4y ago
A lot of manufacturers discovered shortages are mega profitable, making them reluctant to see it as a problem.
- Ekaros 4y ago
  Like anything, they finally see actual profits and increasing production likely won't increase those profits. So I don't actually see there being too much pressure to increase the production.
- VLM 4y ago
  I've been trying to buy stuff and most of the money goes to the middlemen scalpers. I made a mistake in a post above, I thought Raspberry PI 2 W were still retail priced at $5, like the old days of the zero (of course those were unobtainable by most people at $5 even in good economic times). So the Pi foundation is selling for $15 and the market on Amazon has cleared everything for sale below $149. It would be fair to claim, with some hand waving, that the manufacturer of the Pi boosted the price 200% from $5 to $15, but the scalpers are boosting the price from $15 to maybe $130 will sell and clear the market, so the scalpers are making (150-15)/15*100 = 766% lets round that to 800%. So for every hyperinflated price dollar, about 20 cents goes to the mfgr and about 80 cents goes to the scalper. In the long run this destroys middlemen-as-a-service. No matter how inefficient "big corporate" is, its gotta be cheaper than the scalpers, so people are eventually going to buy Pi 2 W zeros from raspi themselves for maybe $40 to $50. Onesie-twosie shipping is expensive for inefficient big corporate so thats maybe even a fair price. Then the scalpers and middlemen will die out with their $130 prices if raspi sells direct for $50.
  - heartbreak 4y ago
    This is why Raspberry Pi used to only sell through specific distributors.
prmoustache 4y ago
> So how long does the microchip shortage continue? In my humble opinion, there is no shortage. There is however a huge priorization and a control of the production to elevate the prices. I guess some people in far east asia figured out they have power the same way as the founders of OPEP did in the 70's. Look at all the microchips based shit you can buy on aliexpress. Doesn't seem they are affected much by shortage.
- janekm 4y ago
  From what I've seen Chinese manufacturers and component distributors built up big stocks when the tariffs/sanctions against China were announced a few years ago. Then when the recent events affected supply chains, they were sitting on decent stocks of popular chips and were able to sell them at 10x original price. Since then the industry has been in a cycle of: - Manufacturer finishes a batch of popular chip - Everybody who uses that chip tries to buy next 3-5 year demand - Popular chip is out of stock again
  - VLM 4y ago
    Don't forget scalpers. The market on Amazon is clearing for Pi 2 W Zero boards at a mere 2600% profit over retail price (higher prices are not selling), so people whom actually want to build something with a Pi are competing with people whom compare a 29% APR credit card vs 2600% per unit profit margin and buy everything they can get for resale. Its classic hyperinflation market. Too much money chasing too little product. The only way to crack the hyperinflation would be to boost interest rates on credit cards over 2600% making speculation unprofitable or for the endusers to abandon the marketplace and let the price crash or boost the manufacturers production until they flood the market down. The CC interest rate thing would not sell well in an election year LOL. The manufacturers cannot outproduce the demands of the entire financial industry money printing press. The only option is market abandonment.
    - hpkuarg 4y ago
      > The CC interest rate thing would not sell well in an election year LOL Nominally, the Federal Reserve is politically independent...
VLM 4y ago
We're still in the toilet-paper-hoarding stage. Also people are still reselling at 400% to 1000% markup. Probably at least a couple years. Imagine if a shipment of 100K Raspberry Pi 2 W Zero came in today. "Everybody knows" if you buy direct you can pay $5, and the lowest price for scalpers on Amazon for a 2 W Zero is currently $149 so you can probably actually sell for $130-ish and clear $125 of scalping profit per unit shipped. Note there's not much risk... Put $500 of Pi on the credit card, get 100 units, if you can scalp FOUR at hyperinflated prices you broke even, even if the price craters to $5 tomorrow and you're sitting on 96 unsold units. There's just too much money floating around for the shortage to go away. The only way for a manufacturer to crack the scalper market is to get financing so cheap they can out-finance the entire scalper "industry". But no cross-planet exporter can out-finance the consumer sector credit card printing press of cash, so the scalpers are semi-permanent and some technologies are essentially dead now. Now personally I've written off the Pi and STM32 ecosystems. Everything in resale is either fake or falsely marked ("8GB" but its actually 2G, etc) or marked up to insane prices so those technologies are dead to me. Unfortunately there's still people trying to use those legacy technologies so prices on Amazon are $149 for a $5 product, but eventually those techs will be widely regarded as dead and then the market can clear and go back to normal. Overall I'm "enjoying" ESP32 products, at least those can still be purchased at a reasonable price...
- konschubert 4y ago
  Is that really how it works? The scalper will eventually want to sell the other 96 units, he has no benefit keeping them around. That should satisfy demand and eventually drive down the price.
- adhesive_wombat 4y ago
  1000%? Ee lad, that's luxureh! I've seen about 15,000% recently (for FPGAs).
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- MertsA 4y ago
  OMFG, I thought this was a hypothetical at the start of this comment. Forget GPUs, $150 for a Raspberry Pi Zero??? And people say Bitcoin is Tulip mania.

"The rip-offs of common powertrain control module 4 units relate to the ongoing shortage of microchips" So how long does the microchip shortage continue?

by r00fus 4y ago

"The rip-offs of common powertrain control module 4 units relate to the ongoing shortage of microchips" So how long does the microchip shortage continue?

Syonyk 4y ago

> So how long does the microchip shortage continue? Warning: Paid Pessimist point of view (I've done computer security for far, far too long). Indefinitely. It doesn't recover. Because (modern, leading process) microchips are the sort of globe spanning supply chain problem that works great, right up until it doesn't. Coolant for some laser is made in this country that's at war. Some critical surface processing chemical is made by that company that had a major power outage and their facility caked up with goo that has to be scraped out. Some semiconductor fab has a worker shortage. Or a water shortage. Or got blown to pieces when some other country tried to invade (TSMC would be nuts if they weren't wired with demolition charges and quietly sure China knew it). There will always be "something" that interferes with the smooth generation of chips. And there will be some supply, but not as much as people hope for, and they'll be rough around the edges, and, besides, you can't get those surface mount resistors in any quantity right now for your design. And eventually, this starts impacting the funding of the companies working on the newest, latest and greatest process tech, and they don't have the money to continue pushing forward. We're long past the point when anyone but the most well funded multinationals can even consider a leading process tech foundry - and there are only a few companies on the planet who can make the hardware for it. The supply chain for foundries is just as bad as anything else, if you have a couple billion to drop on one. And at some point, enough people will find workarounds that don't involve modern silicon that (at least in my arc of the future) demand will drop, so you won't be able to justify the investment in a leading edge fab much beyond the current stuff. Throw a solid recession/depression in, and consumer electronics spending is likely to drop substantially - so there goes a lot of the leading edge demand for some while. The question, "How much damage can an efficient, just in time optimized global economy take before it fails?" has been discussed for many, many years, and the pessimistic point of view as of now would be, "Less than it's taken and is going to take in the next few years." And at some point, things like "food" and "basic energy" are more important to keep working than the latest consumer toys. I'm entirely aware this doesn't paint a pretty picture of the future, and it certainly doesn't involve us going to the stars in any quantities, outside perhaps some token boots on Mars. But it's the sort of ragged decline we've seen throughout history, and, I'd argue, that we're firmly in the middle of right now. "Rattling down the backside of the arc of empire, undergoing catabolic collapse" seems to better predict things than a lot of other mental models lately.

cowtools 4y ago
I mean it's not like most consumer hardware has to be on the latest nodes. The current hardware is more than enough for any consumer applications I can think of. Maybe just need to reuse more hardware. Standardize and commodify replacement parts for mobile devices like framework/fairphone. Reduce the amount of IoT crap in toasters/etc. Use multiseat instead of thin clients. Upcycle old computers.
- Syonyk 4y ago
  > I mean it's not like most consumer hardware has to be on the latest nodes. The current hardware is more than enough for any consumer applications I can think of. Electron says, "Hold my beer!" I would love to see lower software requirements, more long lived systems, etc. Meanwhile, Microsoft is obsoleting... basically the last decade+ of hardware for Windows 11. It's an uphill fight.
  - zdragnar 4y ago
    Meh, I keep multiple electron apps, node processes, and chrome windows and tabs open at the same time, and they're really not at all CPU intensive (except for node running tsc builds or tests). It's the RAM usage that is annoying, and even that isn't too terrible. Edit: of course, I'm running swaywm on linux, so my environment is generally pretty light as it is compared to Windows.
    - Syonyk 4y ago
      I generally try to use ARM small board computers as much as possible. They really struggle with running a bunch of Electron stuff at the same time, and while you can reasonably use some modern websites on them, it's amazing just how much absolute crap you can get rid of with NoScript/Ghostery/etc, and still have a perfectly functional website. My massive, powerful, "Do absolutely everything!" computer in college was a dual Pentium III 866, with 768MB RAM. And a hex core, 2GHz ARM box with 4GB RAM can't do half as much, because of just how heavily bloated software is. I still write code, browse the web, chat with people... and I need radically more resources because that's what software development has decided is easy. Meanwhile, stuff like Hexchat for IRC just... uses no resources and works as wonderfully as ever.

lostmsu 4y ago

Ever played Factorio?

adhesive_wombat 4y ago
My money is on the semiconductor shortage bring resolved way before The Factory has finished growing.

rasz 4y ago

A lot of manufacturers discovered shortages are mega profitable, making them reluctant to see it as a problem.

Ekaros 4y ago
Like anything, they finally see actual profits and increasing production likely won't increase those profits. So I don't actually see there being too much pressure to increase the production.
VLM 4y ago
I've been trying to buy stuff and most of the money goes to the middlemen scalpers. I made a mistake in a post above, I thought Raspberry PI 2 W were still retail priced at $5, like the old days of the zero (of course those were unobtainable by most people at $5 even in good economic times). So the Pi foundation is selling for $15 and the market on Amazon has cleared everything for sale below $149. It would be fair to claim, with some hand waving, that the manufacturer of the Pi boosted the price 200% from $5 to $15, but the scalpers are boosting the price from $15 to maybe $130 will sell and clear the market, so the scalpers are making (150-15)/15*100 = 766% lets round that to 800%. So for every hyperinflated price dollar, about 20 cents goes to the mfgr and about 80 cents goes to the scalper. In the long run this destroys middlemen-as-a-service. No matter how inefficient "big corporate" is, its gotta be cheaper than the scalpers, so people are eventually going to buy Pi 2 W zeros from raspi themselves for maybe $40 to $50. Onesie-twosie shipping is expensive for inefficient big corporate so thats maybe even a fair price. Then the scalpers and middlemen will die out with their $130 prices if raspi sells direct for $50.
- heartbreak 4y ago
  This is why Raspberry Pi used to only sell through specific distributors.

prmoustache 4y ago

> So how long does the microchip shortage continue? In my humble opinion, there is no shortage. There is however a huge priorization and a control of the production to elevate the prices. I guess some people in far east asia figured out they have power the same way as the founders of OPEP did in the 70's. Look at all the microchips based shit you can buy on aliexpress. Doesn't seem they are affected much by shortage.

janekm 4y ago
From what I've seen Chinese manufacturers and component distributors built up big stocks when the tariffs/sanctions against China were announced a few years ago. Then when the recent events affected supply chains, they were sitting on decent stocks of popular chips and were able to sell them at 10x original price. Since then the industry has been in a cycle of: - Manufacturer finishes a batch of popular chip - Everybody who uses that chip tries to buy next 3-5 year demand - Popular chip is out of stock again
- VLM 4y ago
  Don't forget scalpers. The market on Amazon is clearing for Pi 2 W Zero boards at a mere 2600% profit over retail price (higher prices are not selling), so people whom actually want to build something with a Pi are competing with people whom compare a 29% APR credit card vs 2600% per unit profit margin and buy everything they can get for resale. Its classic hyperinflation market. Too much money chasing too little product. The only way to crack the hyperinflation would be to boost interest rates on credit cards over 2600% making speculation unprofitable or for the endusers to abandon the marketplace and let the price crash or boost the manufacturers production until they flood the market down. The CC interest rate thing would not sell well in an election year LOL. The manufacturers cannot outproduce the demands of the entire financial industry money printing press. The only option is market abandonment.
  - hpkuarg 4y ago
    > The CC interest rate thing would not sell well in an election year LOL Nominally, the Federal Reserve is politically independent...

VLM 4y ago

We're still in the toilet-paper-hoarding stage. Also people are still reselling at 400% to 1000% markup. Probably at least a couple years. Imagine if a shipment of 100K Raspberry Pi 2 W Zero came in today. "Everybody knows" if you buy direct you can pay $5, and the lowest price for scalpers on Amazon for a 2 W Zero is currently $149 so you can probably actually sell for $130-ish and clear $125 of scalping profit per unit shipped. Note there's not much risk... Put $500 of Pi on the credit card, get 100 units, if you can scalp FOUR at hyperinflated prices you broke even, even if the price craters to $5 tomorrow and you're sitting on 96 unsold units. There's just too much money floating around for the shortage to go away. The only way for a manufacturer to crack the scalper market is to get financing so cheap they can out-finance the entire scalper "industry". But no cross-planet exporter can out-finance the consumer sector credit card printing press of cash, so the scalpers are semi-permanent and some technologies are essentially dead now. Now personally I've written off the Pi and STM32 ecosystems. Everything in resale is either fake or falsely marked ("8GB" but its actually 2G, etc) or marked up to insane prices so those technologies are dead to me. Unfortunately there's still people trying to use those legacy technologies so prices on Amazon are $149 for a $5 product, but eventually those techs will be widely regarded as dead and then the market can clear and go back to normal. Overall I'm "enjoying" ESP32 products, at least those can still be purchased at a reasonable price...

konschubert 4y ago
Is that really how it works? The scalper will eventually want to sell the other 96 units, he has no benefit keeping them around. That should satisfy demand and eventually drive down the price.
adhesive_wombat 4y ago
1000%? Ee lad, that's luxureh! I've seen about 15,000% recently (for FPGAs).
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
MertsA 4y ago
OMFG, I thought this was a hypothetical at the start of this comment. Forget GPUs, $150 for a Raspberry Pi Zero??? And people say Bitcoin is Tulip mania.