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by Nevermark 1752 days ago
I wouldn't be surprised if the current chip shortage becomes chronic for the next decade. The number of uses of chips are skyrocketing as products that are now "smart" compete to be even smarter.

AI applications are processing heavy and applications are growing exponentially.

The competition in the highest end chips is fierce now that Ford, Toyota, etc. are competing against Tesla which has its own custom chips.

Augmented reality in the next several years will severely push demand for the highest performance, lowest energy using chips. Which tend to be the top of the line chips.

Governments around the world have realized chip production is an existential capability. The US alone will be pouring money into catching up and matching TSMC, Samsung, etc. And those companies will respond by prioritizing progress even more.

My money is on their not being a downturn in chip demand, or over capacity, for a very long time. Maybe not for decades.

That's a strong statement, but I think computing has turned a corner.

1 comments

The shortage is not in high end used for AI or self driving car computation, it’s in low end chips like power management, audio codecs, and microcontrollers
That's true.

I think the competition to create smarter products is across the board though. Once a product category has chips, it can be made smarter than the competitors. So its game on at every level of manufacturing.

"Smarter" not necessarily meaning AI, but can be AI.