Price of silicon wafer rising sharply

[Egg-Roll]

14 minutes ago, Prysin said:

on the other side, gov taking over production by force and introducing price control would brutally murder the whole silicon industry

It's technically Market Manipulation (i think i forget now), what the government can do is block all shipments from said companies, and give grants to companies on american soil to start production.

 

Alternatively if companies did the math and found building their own infrastructure if it saves them money in 15 years it would force them to lower prices too.

 

I already basically said this on Page 2 but it seems everyone wants to cry about the prices instead so here you guys go:

[Prysin]

8 minutes ago, Orangeator said:

Well, actually the U.S. government very much so could. Technically they could just ban the import of silicon and bend manufactures arm's to lower the price. And then there wouldn't be a god damn thing the companies could do, that would literally bankrupt them. Buuuttttttt the chances of that happening are quite literally not there.

 

Edit: Hell I am pretty sure the president could sign an executive order banning the purchase of it from other countries which would seriously hurt them, even though it would be overturned, you are talking a week or two (a week or two of no income, for a business, would hurt their earning reports, and lose investors, tanking their stock) before anything is done to over turn it.

no they couldnt, because the companies would just flag out of the US in such an event. This would cost the states 50-100k+ jobs. Thus just the thought of such a bill being written is well, a pipe dream.

 

no senator or congressman would EVER dare write or support such a bill, as it would make them directly liable for the loss of thousands of jobs.

 

The president does not have such authority. Such authority goees under the state department and the department of commerce and trade or whatever its called

[Prysin]

13 minutes ago, AlwaysFSX said:

Depends, could do cost of production + 3% profit. Wouldn't completely kill it.

it would, because the mining companies mining silicon would be hit.

[Egg-Roll]

2 minutes ago, Prysin said:

no they couldnt, because the companies would just flag out of the US in such an event. This would cost the states 50-100k+ jobs.

ummm where did you get those numbers? plus most electronics are made in china and other cheap locations anyways... Plus Apple and Samsung are not going to pull out of the USA nor will anyone else... It would kill them faster than any bill or regulation could.

[Prysin]

1 minute ago, Egg-Roll said:

ummm where did you get those numbers? plus most electronics are made in china and other cheap locations anyways... Plus Apple and Samsung are not going to pull out of the USA nor will anyone else... It would kill them faster than any bill or regulation could.

just look up roughly all the people involved in Intel, AMD, Nvidia etc that is working in the US + direct subcontractors and those numbers are probably not far off

[mr moose]

24 minutes ago, Prysin said:

on the other side, gov taking over production by force and introducing price control would brutally murder the whole silicon industry

oooooooh, that's pretty debatable.  I have lived through many industries (phone, power, gas and water) being Government owned/regulated and then privatized to a free market.  There seems to be minor trade off's,  and which ones better seems to be subjective. 

 

At any rate I think they are just making stuff up to charge more,  I mean,  I can still buy my silicone for $3 a tube from bunnings.

[Jito463]

3 hours ago, TidaLWaveZ said:

Everything will be fine once they turn 18. 

Yes, I know the difference between minor and mine.

Your post is begging for this

 

 

[Bananasplit_00]

just when it was looking good for DRAM with samsung saying they were expanding their fabs...

[Egg-Roll]

9 minutes ago, Prysin said:

just look up roughly all the people involved in Intel, AMD, Nvidia etc that is working in the US + direct subcontractors and those numbers are probably not far off

 

Still how many of those will pull out? 0 that's how many. If we block imports of one item from all producers who want to gouge on price there will be a dozen startups to handle the supply demand and those morons will have to go back to the old pricing. Besides don't a few of those companies make their own wafers?

 

Intel does that is for sure https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/foundry/wafer-manufacturing.html

That means anything intel or intel relyant is going nowhere as long as they dont jump on the gouging wagon.

 

Also quickly looking at ram costs going up it's not the cost of silica its supply/demand nonsense. which makes this even more dumb. https://forums.anandtech.com/threads/ddr4-prices-what-the-crap-is-going-on.2512320/

If silica wafers was such a huge overhead on all devices, i would expect everything would be 10x more expensive. But luckily they aren't.

[Princess Luna]

Make this black friday count, I find funny there was people still dreaming that RAM and SSD prices would fall, same with GPU, moral of the story all is getting more expensive.

 

For a brief period getting a PC gaming indeed was somewhat cheap then in the past but we're back to the old fashion rule that PC Gaming indeed is more Elite and expensive than console gaming... At least on the mid to high end.

[Notional]

I doubt this will be a huge issue. Due to process shrinking and higher yields (like Ryzen being up to 95+%), I doubt it will be a huge issue. Especially if Navi will be a multi die part similar to ThreadRipper. Certainly things like silicon interposers will be more expensive, but I wonder if AMD can get something out of their Intel collaboration with the silicon bridge technology. Let's see how it goes. It's not like it's a big issue in a total build if SSD's, RAM and GPU's go down in price.

[PocketNerd]

"We don't care that there's demand, we're just going to jack prices and rake in the extra dough!"

Quick, someone start-up a Wafer Manufacturing business!

[Clanscorpia]

4 hours ago, AluminiumTech said:

this is why investors need to not be part of a corporate hierarchy.

 

It's always investors screwing over consumers from micro-transaction loot boxes to now price gauging silicon wafer customers and consumers.

You dont know how buisness works do you

 

[pyrojoe34]

2 hours ago, mr moose said:

At any rate I think they are just making stuff up to charge more,  I mean,  I can still buy my silicone for $3 a tube from bunnings.

I'm sure you know this but just in case: Silicon and silicone are two very different things and aren't remotely comparable. Microchip-grade silicon wafers have to be incredibly pure, perfect crystalline Si wafers with extremely tight tolerances. Silicone is SiO (chemically very different) and isn't crystalline or pure by any relative measure and is used for bathrooms, boobs, and lubrication (among many, many other uses).

[Mihle]

This is one of the cases that make me want more regulations from governments, especially in some countries.

[Terryv]

1 hour ago, PocketNerd said:

"We don't care that there's demand, we're just going to jack prices and rake in the extra dough!"

Quick, someone start-up a Wafer Manufacturing business!

It's not that simple. For new fabs to be built there needs to be long term demand. If they can't keep them running at or near capacity, it can cost more than it's worth.

 

They shouldn't react to sudden temporary spikes in demand, it's bad business to do so.

 

If there were enough demand, it's in their best interest to meet it. Or else other fabs will.

[PocketNerd]

11 minutes ago, Terryv said:

It's not that simple. For new fabs to be built there needs to be long term demand. If they can't keep them running at or near capacity, it can cost more than it's worth.

 

They shouldn't react to sudden temporary spikes in demand, it's bad business to do so.

 

If there were enough demand, it's in their best interest to meet it. Or else other fabs will.

If they're jacking prices by another 20% for 2018 because of demand, would that not be an indicator that this isn't temporary?

[BlueChinchillaEatingDorito]

Welp, guess my outdated, broken ass rig and laptop are going to have to tuff it up for another few years. 

[mr moose]

7 hours ago, pyrojoe34 said:

I'm sure you know this but just in case: Silicon and silicone are two very different things and aren't remotely comparable. Microchip-grade silicon wafers have to be incredibly pure, perfect crystalline Si wafers with extremely tight tolerances. Silicone is SiO (chemically very different) and isn't crystalline or pure by any relative measure and is used for bathrooms, boobs, and lubrication (among many, many other uses).

very aware, but thanks anyway.  :thumbsup:

[Spannerhands]

In the production market today there has been a massive increase in the cost of recycled and kraft papers (single wall packaging) & corrugated products (Boxes) due to a Far East paper shortage. Does not make the news, but making a much larger impact.

[Uzume]

When companies collude to lower output (and maximise profits) it creates opportunities for other companies to enter the market so it isn't a good long term strategy. Yes they make good short term growth but over time they will lose market share.

 

That is why Samsung and Co are increasing supply of memory next year after artificially limiting it this year to drive prices up. They don't want Chinese companies springing up to fill the void they are intentionally creating.

 

Same with rare earth minerals in China, they cornered the market years ago but then started making political threats with supply. A lot of previously unviable production sites in the world then became viable again and it turned around to bite the Chinese on the arse. 

[Prysin]

14 hours ago, Notional said:

I doubt this will be a huge issue. Due to process shrinking and higher yields (like Ryzen being up to 95+%), I doubt it will be a huge issue. Especially if Navi will be a multi die part similar to ThreadRipper. Certainly things like silicon interposers will be more expensive, but I wonder if AMD can get something out of their Intel collaboration with the silicon bridge technology. Let's see how it goes. It's not like it's a big issue in a total build if SSD's, RAM and GPU's go down in price.

this will not affect AMD that much. But intels XEONs and Nvidias high end GPUs, both of which is monolithic designs, and thus requires a lot of silicon, these thigns will be hurt

[JoostinOnline]

It's like we can't win.  I swear, pre-built computers are looking better and better.

[Notional]

1 hour ago, Prysin said:

this will not affect AMD that much. But intels XEONs and Nvidias high end GPUs, both of which is monolithic designs, and thus requires a lot of silicon, these thigns will be hurt

Both of those products carry a huge profit margin though. I do wonder how big Intel's and TSMC's silicon ingot stock is. Could be quite a delayed reaction in pricing, if any.

[IamODIN]

here i am still saving for a 1080 ti. and now i have to read this bullsh*t