General > General Technical Chat
What's actually "chip shortage"?
coppice:
--- Quote from: nardev on August 17, 2021, 03:17:22 pm ---Well, to me this all looks more than obvious now that it's an artificially generated crisis. Until now, everything should have been stabilized IF they wanted.
btw. here is the strategy of EU, pretty fresh document https://www.bruegel.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/PC-2021-17-semiconductors-.pdf
--- End quote ---
So you think its quick and easy to add fabs that cost billions each, and require teams of highly skilled people? You also think people will be delighted to spend those billions when every large surge in demand is followed by a bad slump, long before any new capacity has been amortised?
David Hess:
I think there were major customers who thought they could eat their cake and have it to look at. They wanted just in time delivery, with someone else eating the cost of inventory.
nardev:
--- Quote from: coppice on August 17, 2021, 04:42:33 pm ---
--- Quote from: nardev on August 17, 2021, 03:17:22 pm ---Well, to me this all looks more than obvious now that it's an artificially generated crisis. Until now, everything should have been stabilized IF they wanted.
btw. here is the strategy of EU, pretty fresh document https://www.bruegel.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/PC-2021-17-semiconductors-.pdf
--- End quote ---
So you think its quick and easy to add fabs that cost billions each, and require teams of highly skilled people? You also think people will be delighted to spend those billions when every large surge in demand is followed by a bad slump, long before any new capacity has been amortised?
--- End quote ---
At the moment, i'm pretty frustrated because i can't find LAN8742/LAN8740 chips. And they are in plans for ~75 weeks. So popular, so simple and doesn't require sophisticated procedures for manufacturing.
To me it's not obvious why such chips are not available. I can't understand that.
ataradov:
--- Quote from: nardev on August 18, 2021, 04:14:27 pm ---To me it's not obvious why such chips are not available. I can't understand that.
--- End quote ---
Manufactures don't continuously produce parts. They do runs on multiple wafers for the predictable near future demand and already placed orders. Then store those wafers and package them as needed into the final parts.
Then production is switched to something else. There was no demand or placed orders for your parts, their slots were allocated to other parts, so now your parts are at the end of the queue.
For some rarely used, but still active ICs there are parts shipped now that were made more than 5 years ago. They will have recent date code, since date code indicates time of packaging, not the source material.
nardev:
--- Quote from: ataradov on August 17, 2021, 03:50:36 pm ---
--- Quote from: nardev on August 17, 2021, 03:17:22 pm ---Well, to me this all looks more than obvious now that it's an artificially generated crisis. Until now, everything should have been stabilized IF they wanted.
--- End quote ---
Who are "they"? Semiconductor companies? They don't want to "fix" it, they are working as normal based on what was ordered. All new orders went to the end of the queue.
You need to understand that 52 week factory lead times were normal even before the crisis. You just were always observing the other end of that pipeline, because distributors managed their orders well, and there was no interruptions. But once you interrupt it by cancelling orders, you are in for a long wait.
There is nothing artificial about it.
--- End quote ---
Well, ok, another thing i bothering me.
Why are so many popular, not so sophisticated chips to manufacture out of stock?
When i read those policies, it's very clear that there is a “technological cold war” going on.
USA/EU have pretty clear instructions (i'm not saying that there is anything wrong about that) to protect IP, increase investments, build fabs, protect technologies, keep the tech gap 2 generations apart from China etc.
In my understanding, in order to do that, it takes, time, money and it will also have to impact the cost as they will probably reduce export to CN (reduce a profit as a consequence), yet go into an investments. So, my expectation is that making this "out of stock" maneuver is not spontaneous market reaction but also buying time for some changes that should come.
I don't see any rushing to supplement the "out of stock" parts.
You are right, even in the strategy that i shared here, they claim that it's every 4-5 year cycle of parts being delayed or slowed down in manufacturing. However, i think that we have new political situation which fuels it more than purely technological reason.
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version