How is Chipageddon affecting you?

[JPortici]

today reels of many parts popped up at various distributors. maybe (maybe) we are starting to see some canceled orders?

[james_s]

In other words, stuff like auto racing is just a waste of energy if the rules only allow the use of outdated technology or otherwise prevents innovation. But if the rules instead encourage innovation, it wouldn't be as much of a waste anymore. Hence why I push for useful work altcoins like Curecoin and Foldingcoin - they use energy just like Bitcoin does, but the primary purpose of that energy use is solving real problems like cancer and even COVID-19.

Auto racing is a waste of energy, although we need to look at the scale of things here. If auto racing was so prevalent that it was consuming as much fuel as some entire nations then I would be all in favor of banning it. Likewise if cryptocurrency was a niche thing that consumed a bit of energy and entertained people then great, whatever. That isn't the case though, it is literally consuming as much energy as entire countries, it is already a huge problem, and the time to get that under control was years ago. Pushing for cyptocurrencies that do useful work is a good start, but it might be too late for that. Let's ban the ones that are the worst offenders first and then people can develop others that are more useful.

I suspect though that any that don't require vast amounts of energy will never be worth anything because they will be easy to mine. If there is one that I can mine effectively on a Raspberry Pi then surely I can mine a lot more of it a lot faster on a quad processor Xeon. If I can mine one that solves real world problems, then maybe I can hack out the real world problem solving portion and just mine the currency even faster, that's the problem I see.

And still the fundamental problem with all of these remains, they are extremely volatile, making them useless as currency, people are making all the money in the speculative investment of the currency itself. A good currency has a value that is as stable as possible, because the whole point of a currency is to carry value to facilitate transactions. I can sell something for $10 today and buy something roughly similar for that same $10 next month. If the value of that currency was fluctuating wildly it would just be gambling, if I wanted to gamble I'd go to the casino.

[james_s]

today reels of many parts popped up at various distributors. maybe (maybe) we are starting to see some canceled orders?

More likely they are just starting to catch up and get shipments in. Everybody already stocked up on the stuff they needed, parts are still being produced and inventory is coming in. All it takes is a lapse in demand and stock will start to accumulate again.

[NiHaoMike]

I suspect though that any that don't require vast amounts of energy will never be worth anything because they will be easy to mine. If there is one that I can mine effectively on a Raspberry Pi then surely I can mine a lot more of it a lot faster on a quad processor Xeon. If I can mine one that solves real world problems, then maybe I can hack out the real world problem solving portion and just mine the currency even faster, that's the problem I see.

Except that Xeon would use a lot more power and cost a lot more than a few super cheap smartphones. And it wouldn't perform particularly well on that kind of coin because the mining software is ARM native and emulation would incur a huge performance penalty. (Back when Perk was worth something, quite a few tried mining it in x86 VMs only to find out it would run very poorly if it worked at all.) The most recent smartphone mined coins are IP limited anyways, so having a really fast ARM CPU wouldn't help much. (Although I'm not sure if Apple M1 would be a good choice for mining even if coins like Perk were still profitable and were not limited by IP, simply because for the cost of a single Mac Mini, you could buy 70 really cheap smartphones instead.)

Curecoin and Foldingcoin have been out there for years and thus far, nobody has hacked it to bypass the real problem solving. Most likely because there's some authentication to make it more or less impossible.

[VK3DRB]

This is MUCH worse now than it was just a month ago. I did an outline design then and looked for commonly available chips. Now I am doing the proper schematic, I noticed about half of these chips are not available. I feel bad designing products where we may not be able to build even prototypes until 2022.

TI says their 35 weeks lead time on BQ chips is not a blanket statement, but is the expected time as per an email I received from Texas Instruments. To say TI is a disappointment is an understatement.

Read Supplier Statements here https://www.digikey.com.au/en/help/coronavirus. The statements are at the bottom of the webpage.

[cortex_m0]

TI says their 35 weeks lead time on BQ chips is not a blanket statement, but is the expected time as per an email I received from Texas Instruments. To say TI is a disappointment is an understatement.

Yes, that's what "standard lead time" means.

What would good service be here? You reach out and they respond that they've been holding back 250 pieces in a filing cabinet just in case you asked for them?

[tkamiya]

Well....  Having the whole world shutdown due to pandemic is as unusual as things can get.  No one can possibly plan for that and run an efficient business.  I wouldn't be disappointed in TI or any manufacturer.  Personally, it has not affected me but then again, I am only a hobbyist who does repair on side.

I am having more issue with fast pace of parts obsolescence and counterfeit in global market.  I also have a habit of buying more than I need for a project.  For common parts that I use, I buy in bulk.

[JPortici]

today reels of many parts popped up at various distributors. maybe (maybe) we are starting to see some canceled orders?

More likely they are just starting to catch up and get shipments in. Everybody already stocked up on the stuff they needed, parts are still being produced and inventory is coming in. All it takes is a lapse in demand and stock will start to accumulate again.

Ah, i'm talking about parts that were not "on order" or had delivery dates months from now

[MathWizard]

The RTX 3080 TI is out, but of course will be impossible to get for average gamers, even if they had $2k which is probably what they will go for.

No way am I paying those prices for a GPU that will be out performed for 1/2 the money in 2-3 years, I'd rather get a 2GSa/s scope

[james_s]

Except that Xeon would use a lot more power and cost a lot more than a few super cheap smartphones. And it wouldn't perform particularly well on that kind of coin because the mining software is ARM native and emulation would incur a huge performance penalty. (Back when Perk was worth something, quite a few tried mining it in x86 VMs only to find out it would run very poorly if it worked at all.) The most recent smartphone mined coins are IP limited anyways, so having a really fast ARM CPU wouldn't help much. (Although I'm not sure if Apple M1 would be a good choice for mining even if coins like Perk were still profitable and were not limited by IP, simply because for the cost of a single Mac Mini, you could buy 70 really cheap smartphones instead.)

So why limit it to a few cheap smart phones? Why not use hundreds of them, or thousands of them, or tens of thousands of them? The value of cryptocurrency is roughly proportional to the effort/expense of mining it. Mining one bitcoin at this point consumes a huge amount of resources so the value is high. There are others that can be mined on less expensive hardware with less energy and they are correspondingly less valuable. I just don't see any way to alter this relationship, if something requires a low investment to mine then the value will be low, because why pay a bunch of money for something if it's easy to just mine your own?

Either way I think it will all end up being banned at some point. That won't stop it from existing but it will immediately eliminate all legitimate uses and there will be no legal way to convert crypto back into real money.

[tszaboo]

I suspect though that any that don't require vast amounts of energy will never be worth anything because they will be easy to mine. If there is one that I can mine effectively on a Raspberry Pi then surely I can mine a lot more of it a lot faster on a quad processor Xeon. If I can mine one that solves real world problems, then maybe I can hack out the real world problem solving portion and just mine the currency even faster, that's the problem I see.

And still the fundamental problem with all of these remains, they are extremely volatile, making them useless as currency, people are making all the money in the speculative investment of the currency itself. A good currency has a value that is as stable as possible, because the whole point of a currency is to carry value to facilitate transactions. I can sell something for $10 today and buy something roughly similar for that same $10 next month. If the value of that currency was fluctuating wildly it would just be gambling, if I wanted to gamble I'd go to the casino.

There are currencies that are not mined. You have to lock it down, "stake" it then your receive a small amount every block, about 5-10% a year, depending on the currency. Energy usage is almost zero.
There is also USDT, which is worth about 0.99-1.01 USD, mostly 1 USD, always.

[NiHaoMike]

So why limit it to a few cheap smart phones? Why not use hundreds of them, or thousands of them, or tens of thousands of them?

In the early days of Perk mining, quite a few did indeed build some big clusters to mine with. Then the IP limits came and a few of them ended up signing up for second or even third ISP accounts, but most of them just sold the ones they couldn't use. And before you suggest using VPNs or VPS services to get more IPs, those are blacklisted.

[IDEngineer]

I keep hearing about these "IP limits". Surely the majority of the "work" is hardware processing, not bandwidth? In other words, why can't racks and racks of mining machines live behind NAT and a very small number of fixed IP's? How can IP's be a limiting factor? (showing my ignorance here)

[NiHaoMike]

I keep hearing about these "IP limits". Surely the majority of the "work" is hardware processing, not bandwidth? In other words, why can't racks and racks of mining machines live behind NAT and a very small number of fixed IP's? How can IP's be a limiting factor? (showing my ignorance here)

Those coins limit how many mining instances are allowed on a single public IP. How that's enforced is one of the biggest disadvantages of such altcoins, thus far nobody has figured out how to do it in a truly decentralized manner.

[Echo88]

Wanting to read about IC shortage anecdotes, not 3 full pages of cryptocurrency-discussion.
Might as well just start a discussion about cake recipes here, since my mixer might contain a BQ Li-Ion-chip and therefore its related to chip shortage.

[nctnico]

Wanting to read about IC shortage anecdotes, not 3 full pages of cryptocurrency-discussion.
Might as well just start a discussion about cake recipes here, since my mixer might contain a BQ Li-Ion-chip and therefore its related to chip shortage.

I guess you are new to internet 

[Siwastaja]

Wanting to read about IC shortage anecdotes, not 3 full pages of cryptocurrency-discussion.
Might as well just start a discussion about cake recipes here, since my mixer might contain a BQ Li-Ion-chip and therefore its related to chip shortage.

Please show the way and discuss about the ontopic instead of complaining. That is the best way to redirect the discussion back on topic. Usually the lack of on-topic messages is due to nobody having anything to say, as you demonstrate yourself. In this case, it's because there are already gazillion of topics regarding the chip shortage and everybody has talked about it already. Shutting down discussion does not magically generate on-topic comments. If you have a comment or a question, please post it, I'm sure you'll create more on-topic discussion that way.

Also you must be fun at parties. "Everybody shut up! This is Bob's graduation party! Don't you dare discuss about gardening!"

[VK3DRB]

I noticed there are about 120,000 BQ24250YFFR available. A BGA version, rather than the VFQB BQ24250RGET for which there are zero available for 35 weeks. Also noticeable is the price hike on the BGA version  . Funny that. I could respin the board to change the chip, but it is possible the BGA version will disappear within a month or two as well, as they are used on a lot of battery charged equipment including mobile telephones.

The only certainty is uncertainty.

[Tomorokoshi]

Does the use of Agile methods in hardware design with its two-week "Sprint" schedule hide long-term issues?

[Siwastaja]

I think hobbyists and very small startups aside, no one use "agile" or quick hardware design cycles. Now would be the time to do that despite all naysaying, especially from those making the argument about regulations. Do quick cycles using what is available, or die.

[bdunham7]

Wanting to read about IC shortage anecdotes, not 3 full pages of cryptocurrency-discussion.
Might as well just start a discussion about cake recipes here, since my mixer might contain a BQ Li-Ion-chip and therefore its related to chip shortage.

Sure, why not?  My wife wanted to make a low-carb black forest cake, but all the stores were out of cherries.  She couldn't think of any substitutes.

We needed a new handheld mixer for the kitchen and Kitchen-Aid was sold out of the both of the two electronically controlled (chips!) models I was considering.  I finally found one of them, but only in red and in a package with an egg whisk that we don't need for a bit more money.  So we had to settle for a different color mixer (first world problems) and paid more.

The point is that we don't have a chip shortage, we have global supply chain disturbances causing holes in all sorts of random ways.  If you make a product, you may get all your chips only to find that the manufacturer of your injection-molded case is partially shut down due to lack of workers and won't be shipping your cases for a few months.  Anytime you go shopping nowadays, whether at Costco, Grainger or Digi-Key, you never know what they suddenly won't have or what has skyrocketed in price. 

[madires]

No shortage of potato chips over here. And I just received ten SY6912A (2A Li-Ion buck converter/charger) from China with a breathtaking shipping time of just 11 days (paid for standard shipping).

[penfold]

... low-carb black forest cake, but all the stores were out of cherries.  She couldn't think of any substitutes.

We needed a new handheld mixer for the kitchen ...

So, you could apply an agile process here. Make iteration 1 of the cake without cherries, mixed by hand. Report the fact it didn't taste very nice as a bug. And repeat the process until cherries are back in stock.

[Siwastaja]

The key is not just drop the cherries but getting something else to replace them and sell this as an improvement. I'd prefer raspberries or blackberries over cherries any day.

For example, due to the chipageddon we found out a certain part was actually NRND even before the chipageddon and manufacturer failing to report that to any of the distributors so they continued selling them active all the time. The chipageddon forced us to redesign for the newer, improved part. One customer was not happy over the change but they can again choose between accepting an improved product and a tiny bit of uncertainty of change, or die out.

[IDEngineer]

I bet we'll see a lot of parts get abandoned as part of this. They'll want to focus on more profitable parts and this gives them an excuse to orphan parts that might otherwise have been sustained as "support" for a few more years. Not being cynical, they just have limited fab resources and need to allocate fab time where it's most profitable.