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We need chips in everything. Cars could work without them but would be much less efficient and bad for the environnement. Lots of very important medical device

We need chips in everything. Cars could work without them but would be much less efficient and bad for the environnement. Lots of very important medical devices rely on chips or full computers. I would like to see the media industry roll back to a lower tech leaving only the big and very bias information go through. Imagine how hard it would be to keep them accountable. Is it possible to live without computers? Yes, but you don't want to.

viraptor 4y ago
I feel like that's true, but the scale is misleading. We could run most of the things we need with very small chips production. A lot of usage could be removed (most of entertainment), lots of business use could be scaled down (how many businesses need basically a spreadsheet and a filing system equivalent). There will be special usage requiring hitech chips or course. But we can seriously scale down our electronics usage without a negative civilisation impact. The pocket device I write this on has enough power to run what an office of 10 people needs to properly run if we adjust the software to match.
- sacrosancty 4y ago
  If processors were much more interchangeable than they are, we could scavenge chips from less important devices, or at least production that was destined for them, and put them in more important ones. I hope RISC-V can help provide this kind of buffer against short term shocks. For major civilizational collapse where we can't even build new fabs, then we probably won't have much need for new chips anyway, so it's moot.
Gordonjcp 4y ago
> Cars could work without them but would be much less efficient and bad for the environnement. Not as much as you think. Modern cars aren't a whole lot more efficient than and are just about as clean as they were 30 years ago. Most of the electronics in modern cars is for relatively useless stuff like lane keeping assist and that thing that makes the indicators blink in a cool pattern. You can have cars just as clean as modern ones with 1980s-level microcontrollers in the ECUs. You don't even really need catalytic converters, either, because the closed-loop fuelling systems that use a lambda sensor to measure how complete combustion is. We could rid cities of pollution right now, completely, by converting all the internal combustion engine vehicles to run on propane instead of petrol or diesel. This doesn't make finance companies or car companies any money, so it won't happen.

viraptor 4y ago

I feel like that's true, but the scale is misleading. We could run most of the things we need with very small chips production. A lot of usage could be removed (most of entertainment), lots of business use could be scaled down (how many businesses need basically a spreadsheet and a filing system equivalent). There will be special usage requiring hitech chips or course. But we can seriously scale down our electronics usage without a negative civilisation impact. The pocket device I write this on has enough power to run what an office of 10 people needs to properly run if we adjust the software to match.

sacrosancty 4y ago
If processors were much more interchangeable than they are, we could scavenge chips from less important devices, or at least production that was destined for them, and put them in more important ones. I hope RISC-V can help provide this kind of buffer against short term shocks. For major civilizational collapse where we can't even build new fabs, then we probably won't have much need for new chips anyway, so it's moot.

Gordonjcp 4y ago

> Cars could work without them but would be much less efficient and bad for the environnement. Not as much as you think. Modern cars aren't a whole lot more efficient than and are just about as clean as they were 30 years ago. Most of the electronics in modern cars is for relatively useless stuff like lane keeping assist and that thing that makes the indicators blink in a cool pattern. You can have cars just as clean as modern ones with 1980s-level microcontrollers in the ECUs. You don't even really need catalytic converters, either, because the closed-loop fuelling systems that use a lambda sensor to measure how complete combustion is. We could rid cities of pollution right now, completely, by converting all the internal combustion engine vehicles to run on propane instead of petrol or diesel. This doesn't make finance companies or car companies any money, so it won't happen.