[seszett]

That's not really how market works though, if you could make processors that were a million times faster than current ones, there would be demand for much more than 133 000 a year and many people would be ready to pay more than 600$ for them. For comparison, I find on a random Google result that 50 tons of silicon are used per year for CPUs "in the US".

The price of rhenium would skyrocket to million dollars per kg, and as long as production would stay the same (assuming it's limited by raw resource availability rather than just extraction methods) it would keep getting higher.

The current relatively low price of rhenium (relative to its rarity) is simply due to low demand.

[runeks]

You seem to be reversing cause and effect.

Sure, assuming (1) we can actually produce a rhenium CPU, and (2) we are unable to increase the production of rhenium then, yes, the price of rhenium will increase.

But it will increase precisely because we have a working rhenium CPU in production in the first place, which is what the article disputes is possible (due to its current rarity).

Furthermore, the price would skyrocket only if people are actually willing to pay a high price for these rhenium CPUs, which again means they’re worth the money.

[chmod775]

> The current relatively low price of rhenium (relative to its rarity) is simply due to low demand.

For stuff previously needed in low quantities it's usually the reverse - price goes down as more is needed. Initially prices are high because manufacturing equipment has to be maintained even if idle, wages have to be paid, and because of logisticical overhead for the small quanitites. A second price drop occurs as we get into mass-manufacturing and better processes are found.

Rhenium is a byproduct of mining and refinement, but I suspect it is often not captured because the small quanitites needed don't make it economically interesting - you would invest in infrastructure to extract it and immediately crash the price. That would change if there was a stable demand of higher quantities.

[mhb]

And when the price of something goes up, it is more rewarding to find and process more of it.

[lazide]

At a million/kg, new methods of production would definitely be found. Even if it was some kind of neutron bombardment element synthesis.