A dishwasher with a WiFi chipset is not a durable good. Nor is a fridge with a touchscreen, an oven with Bluetooth.
You know what is durable? The simple and straightforward electromechanical mechanisms we used for three centuries before integrated circuits.
One can find plentiful examples of midcentury and older appliances still in service without major maintenance. It's tough to find a modern appliance in service for more than a decade.
The inability to sprinkle magic obsolescence silicon dust over everything will only lead to an increase in quality and durability.
The mechanical timer in a 1980s washing machine will never have a firmware update blocking you from using it. A 1950s fridge runs perfectly fine essentially forever without a cloud API and a goddamn app.
This hypothetical situation is only bad because you've accepted consumerism and forced obsolescence as the norm. These situations are much worse than not being able to buy a $1600 phone every year.
You should be indignant about the unimaginable amount of resources we throw into landfills because the manufacturer decided that you should buy a new one. You should absolutely not be indignant that you can no longer buy shit to throw away.
Do you repair your appliances or do you throw them away and have a new one shipped from the other side of the planet? Do you see the problem?
A dishwasher with a WiFi chipset is not a durable good. Nor is a fridge with a touchscreen, an oven with Bluetooth.
You're completely misinformed. You can buy appliances without any of these and they will still have chips in them. Those buttons controlling the dishwasher? That's a circuit board. The motor driver running the compressor loop in the fridge? Silicon again (and possibly something more exotic for the IGBTs).
Digital logic is just how things are built now. Even if you don't believe in going all the way back to relay logic and analog computing, do you want to give up the switch mode power supplies everywhere in favor of linear regulators?
As others have stated, there's fabs all over the world. They're insufficient in quality and quantity to satisfy current demand at current prices but they're there and can do a lot of it, especially as demand and requirements get reduced to meet what's available.
Don't get me wrong, it would suck, but probably suck less than when everything shut down for covid.
>Car manufacturing grinds to a halt.
>New appliances cannot be manufactured
Until they figure out how to repeal the laws that mandate the features/specs that require the semiconductors in the types and volumes that would be a non-starter.
Maybe your washer doesn't need to detect how much stuff you put in and second guess your water setting?
What are the statistical odds a $15k Nissan Kix being sold in the desert will ever benefit from ABS?
>no new iPhone for five years. No new electronic hardware at all
It's not absolute like that. It's more like move the decimal one place on everything and that makes whole classes of products non-viable.
>New appliances cannot be manufactured. What does the [severe reduction in proportion to their semiconductor and irreplaceable foreign part contents] absence of new durable goods do to the economy?
Fixed for realism.
Demand is elastic to some extent. Prices go up. Industries shrink, alternatives grow.
In any case, it's a relative transfer of wealth and power from most of HN to their plumber and landscaper and those otherwise less affected.
I can see why they might not be on your personal list straight away, no. But I bet weapons, logistics, comand&control etc all do need them. So generals and admirals might start sweating just a little.
Except everything that runs on electricity has a CPU nowadays; the world as it is cannot function without computing. Your bank, your (municipal) government, airplanes, ships, satellites, televisions, the cell network, cash registers, you get the picture.
I realize the CPU's that requires won't implode on day one, but computing becoming unaffordable or even economically unfeasible will have disastrous knock on effects.
There are literally hundreds of semiconductor fabs of various types and process nodes spread all around the world ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_semiconductor_fabricat... ) and the most common chips are fabricated on older, larger process nodes anyway.
Those are facts, but the industry remains fragile. It didn't take much during Covid, and the Nexperia supply shock combined with DRAM shortages are doing a number on automotive right now.
And I imagine the chips manufactured on older larger process nodes would be subsumed to replace newer ones where possible, which cascades. But that's just conjecture on my part.
When nobody acted against Israel, China breathed a lot easier. I think the result affecting affordable CPUs will be the biggest concern for the next ~15 year window.
Now I wonder why Israel didn't built something TSMC-tier. It doesn't really seem out of their capability and it'll gain them a lot of advantages especially geopolitically.
Israel specialized in startups on the design side, and they absolutely dominate. Mellanox and annapurna labs come to mind. On the manufacturing side there's pretty much just Intel, which has 10nm node and beyond inside the borders and formerly owned mobileye. On the process side there's orbotech, which has a majority in their part of the market.
Other than Taiwan itself, it's hard to think of any "small" nations with a comparable density of semiconductor expertise.
“If the system breaks down the consequences will still be very painful. But the bigger the system grows the more disastrous the results of its breakdown will be, so if it is to break down it had best break down sooner rather than later.”
If a hot war pops off over Taiwan, affordable CPUs are going to be a ways down the list of my concerns
Car manufacturing grinds to a halt. Remember what happened to auto prices in 2022? 10x that.
New appliances cannot be manufactured. What dos the absolute absence of new durable goods do to the economy?
There’s no new iPhone for five years. No new electronic hardware at all. What does Apple stock do?
Own any index funds? Those tank too.
Rinse and repeat
Thinking of it as “affordable pcs” is exactly wrong which is actually useful. Invert your totally wrong answer and now you have an actual thought.
A dishwasher with a WiFi chipset is not a durable good. Nor is a fridge with a touchscreen, an oven with Bluetooth.
You know what is durable? The simple and straightforward electromechanical mechanisms we used for three centuries before integrated circuits.
One can find plentiful examples of midcentury and older appliances still in service without major maintenance. It's tough to find a modern appliance in service for more than a decade.
The inability to sprinkle magic obsolescence silicon dust over everything will only lead to an increase in quality and durability.
The mechanical timer in a 1980s washing machine will never have a firmware update blocking you from using it. A 1950s fridge runs perfectly fine essentially forever without a cloud API and a goddamn app.
This hypothetical situation is only bad because you've accepted consumerism and forced obsolescence as the norm. These situations are much worse than not being able to buy a $1600 phone every year.
You should be indignant about the unimaginable amount of resources we throw into landfills because the manufacturer decided that you should buy a new one. You should absolutely not be indignant that you can no longer buy shit to throw away.
Do you repair your appliances or do you throw them away and have a new one shipped from the other side of the planet? Do you see the problem?
Digital logic is just how things are built now. Even if you don't believe in going all the way back to relay logic and analog computing, do you want to give up the switch mode power supplies everywhere in favor of linear regulators?
I’m not quite sure we even have the know-how these days for fully analog control systems.
My dumb refrigerator has a circuit board controlling the compressor based on temperature sensors.
My dumb gas water heater has a digital control unit even though it doesn’t use AC or battery power.
Same thing for gas furnace - control board running fan and gas igniter+valves. This isn’t just relays…
It’d be a substantial effort to design analog drop-in replacement parts - if even possible. Installation probably wouldn’t be pretty.
At least I think my toaster and rice cooker are fully analog.
As others have stated, there's fabs all over the world. They're insufficient in quality and quantity to satisfy current demand at current prices but they're there and can do a lot of it, especially as demand and requirements get reduced to meet what's available.
Don't get me wrong, it would suck, but probably suck less than when everything shut down for covid.
>Car manufacturing grinds to a halt.
>New appliances cannot be manufactured
Until they figure out how to repeal the laws that mandate the features/specs that require the semiconductors in the types and volumes that would be a non-starter.
Maybe your washer doesn't need to detect how much stuff you put in and second guess your water setting?
What are the statistical odds a $15k Nissan Kix being sold in the desert will ever benefit from ABS?
>no new iPhone for five years. No new electronic hardware at all
It's not absolute like that. It's more like move the decimal one place on everything and that makes whole classes of products non-viable.
>New appliances cannot be manufactured. What does the [severe reduction in proportion to their semiconductor and irreplaceable foreign part contents] absence of new durable goods do to the economy?
Fixed for realism.
Demand is elastic to some extent. Prices go up. Industries shrink, alternatives grow.
In any case, it's a relative transfer of wealth and power from most of HN to their plumber and landscaper and those otherwise less affected.
I can see why they might not be on your personal list straight away, no. But I bet weapons, logistics, comand&control etc all do need them. So generals and admirals might start sweating just a little.
Except everything that runs on electricity has a CPU nowadays; the world as it is cannot function without computing. Your bank, your (municipal) government, airplanes, ships, satellites, televisions, the cell network, cash registers, you get the picture.
I realize the CPU's that requires won't implode on day one, but computing becoming unaffordable or even economically unfeasible will have disastrous knock on effects.
There are literally hundreds of semiconductor fabs of various types and process nodes spread all around the world ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_semiconductor_fabricat... ) and the most common chips are fabricated on older, larger process nodes anyway.
Those are facts, but the industry remains fragile. It didn't take much during Covid, and the Nexperia supply shock combined with DRAM shortages are doing a number on automotive right now.
And I imagine the chips manufactured on older larger process nodes would be subsumed to replace newer ones where possible, which cascades. But that's just conjecture on my part.
(Sorry for the digression, but your username really does check out in a discussion about CPUs.)
True
When nobody acted against Israel, China breathed a lot easier. I think the result affecting affordable CPUs will be the biggest concern for the next ~15 year window.
Now I wonder why Israel didn't built something TSMC-tier. It doesn't really seem out of their capability and it'll gain them a lot of advantages especially geopolitically.
Israel specialized in startups on the design side, and they absolutely dominate. Mellanox and annapurna labs come to mind. On the manufacturing side there's pretty much just Intel, which has 10nm node and beyond inside the borders and formerly owned mobileye. On the process side there's orbotech, which has a majority in their part of the market.
Other than Taiwan itself, it's hard to think of any "small" nations with a comparable density of semiconductor expertise.
“If the system breaks down the consequences will still be very painful. But the bigger the system grows the more disastrous the results of its breakdown will be, so if it is to break down it had best break down sooner rather than later.”
From Ted Kaczynski
https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/library/national...
Or perhaps one might pressure Washington to forcibly unwind the deals with OpenAI and NVIDIA with the foundries.