[b112]

Good grief. Outside of pandemic supply issues, eg, in normal times, a entity (gov, corp, billionaore), would go to a large producer, and place an order.

I assure you, they'd pay less per unit, in bulk, not more.

You think they'd buy off of ebay?! Amazon?

No! They'd bypass the little guy, and get a large run done themselves. And yes, it isn't a big deal.

If they had to, they'd put out a RFP and get corps to submit quotes on qty whatever.

Here's a secret... people love money. If someone wants a large order of something, it happens.

Even in the pandemic, if govs want anything, gloves, masks, they get it well before you or I, before corps.

[thebean11]

It’s not just “pandemic supply”..even in the more mature GPU market Nvidia isn’t even close to keeping up with demand. There is not a button you can push to spin up more fabs.

The fact that you’d compare gloves and masks to chips is telling.