No! It's negative WRT chip production rate! I have a phd in controls and meant what I said; I assume roboticsresearcher also knows some freshman-level control theory ;-).
Stability ==== good in undergrad engineering, but not here. We DON'T want production rate to be stable when we have a global supply shortage! Here, a negative feedback loop is stabilizing the system in an undesirable equilibrium.
I.e., the function that's being controlled in "supply of chips", the stable state is "saturated supply", and the negative feedback loop that maintains that equilibrium is "starving chip fab suppliers".
(meta: people down-voting comments on control theory terminology by two different experts in this field at least makes me feel a bit better about the signal:noise ratio on the vote counts on my other comments in this thread ;))
Only partially facetious here: you have mistakenly decided that it it clamps at zero. If we consider the hoarding aspects, the feedback continues into net negative chip availability. Before long, there will be roving gangs of looters taking back the chips you thought you already had! ;-)
Stability ==== good in undergrad engineering, but not here. We DON'T want production rate to be stable when we have a global supply shortage! Here, a negative feedback loop is stabilizing the system in an undesirable equilibrium.
I.e., the function that's being controlled in "supply of chips", the stable state is "saturated supply", and the negative feedback loop that maintains that equilibrium is "starving chip fab suppliers".
(meta: people down-voting comments on control theory terminology by two different experts in this field at least makes me feel a bit better about the signal:noise ratio on the vote counts on my other comments in this thread ;))