Have you noticed any easing of the chip shortage?

[Microdoser]

I've started to get notifications for chips being in stock, and the stock they have is not vanishing before I can order some.

Have any of you noticed chips being more available?

[IconicPCB]

Parallax Propeller micro went from some 15=16 dollars to a peak of some 75 dollars  only to come back down to about 18 dollars/

[mon2]

Shhhhhh!!!!! Not so loud but yes, see some trickles of parts on the ti online store. Hope the trend continues.

[Rat_Patrol]

A few things better, but a lot of things worse.

Been far too difficult for me to find automotive grade 1% 1206 resistors in the sizes I need w/o paying stupid prices.

I finally got some stuff from TI directly, that was nice. Also finally found some current sense resistors I've been needing, but at 3x the cost they were before this insanity.

[mon2]

automotive grade 1% 1206

Sharing a great contact for you to chat with (they deal with WALSIN / SAMSUNG and are very good at it - always at every trade fair in HK; better prices than LCSC):

Leo
Sales Representative
Liket Corporation             
Tel: 886-2-29173334 #137
Fax: 886-2-29173337
E-mail: leo[remove-at]liket.com.tw
SKYPE: live:leo83060536
http://www.liket.com.tw/
Address:
3FL, No.8, Lane 218, Sec. 2
Chung Hsing Rd, Hsin Tien District
New Taipei City, Taiwan
We are manufacturer of Resistors and
official distributor for :

[twospoons]

No. Still running around finding alternates for current projects.

[Mangozac]

Overall the situation continues to decline for us. There is the odd win here and there with random stock becoming available but overall nothing is in stock and lead times are getting worse. Not only that but lead times stated when orders were placed a year ago are being extended by several weeks. Some days lately I hate this industry we're in...

[Styno]

I see more degradation, not only in chips but also in connectors, cables and production consumables.

I have quite a few inventory notifications set at Texas Instruments but also actively check their inventory online, sometimes I see a component getting inventory of a few thousand but do not receive a notification email.

Sometimes I'm quickly able to order a limited amount but last week something strange happened. A DC/DC converter had some 3500+ in inventory but orders were limited to 50pcs so I tried to order 50. Unfortunately their website said "Product(s) TPS60430YDBVR cannot be supported by available inventory at this time. [...]", so I tried 40, 10 pcs, nothing worked. I tried this throughout the day as I desperately need them but got the same error every time while the inventory gradually went down to eventually 0 by the end of the day. TI support was only able to utter scripted answers which were of no use. Pretty frustrating.

[Berni]

Well it is a bit better because they cut off Russia for obvious reasons, so some of the orders that meant to go there ended up getting available. Once that injection of stocks dries up it is probably going to be back to the usual unobtainable silicon.

[sam512bb]

Good day,

As others have mentioned... the situation is still getting worse, however, every once in a while some limited amount of stock surfaces... but is gone almost as fast as it appears.  Lead times on most items (Ethernet PHYs, PMICs, MCUs, etc) still have 52+ week leadtimes with many showing availability in late 2023 or early 2024.

I would say the ride is not over yet, so buckle up.

Cheers,

Sam

[NorthGuy]

As I see it, it's getting only worse.

[satoshi]

I'd say it has been getting worse lately. Even now Mouser does not allocate inventory if your order needs to wait for a part that is not in stock, so you better ask them to ship out parts in stock if you want to guarantee they'll stay in stock.

I hope you guys are enjoying ze great greaseat.

[schmitt trigger]

Definitely worse, it is now to the point that very mature opamps are also becoming unobtainium.

Some instances those can be substituted, but the subs are anywhere 5 to 15 times more expensive. On a board with a dozen devices, the cost spirals totally out of control.

In other instance those vintage opamps have a particular feature which the circuit requires to operate correctly. Or the device is not produced in the required IC package. Some of our boards are double decker because of all the adapter boards.

A glimmer of light then and there, but overall the situation is still pretty dark. 

[Chris56000]

Hi!

It is still absolutely bloody ridiculous!

Two examples – the OnSemi FSA4159P6X Analog SPDT Switch (1 Ω "οn" resistance) in  an SC–70 package and a 1.8 V LDO regulator with auto–discharge, MIC5504–1.8YM–5TR, to go in a circuit for a 405–line converter to feed a signal to vintage TV sets, can't be had for love nor money for TWO YEARS!!

What are all these bloody Analog Switch ICs suddenly wanted for?!

If this stupid chip shortage is going to go on for evermore I might as well stick to ancient oscilloscopes rather than try to make or fix anything modern!

Chris Williams

[Berni]

The problem is that the chip shortage has motivated companies to start stocking components themselves to avoid production grinding to a halt due to a part being on backorder for the next 2 years.

So they might start buying up large quantities of even the cheep little chips like LDOs and Opamps so that they are covered for the next year or two in case that chip disappears from the market. The result of this being that they buy up all the stock at the chip fabs and distributors, making the chip shortage plague spread onto those too. This makes even more companies panic about chips going out of stock that they also start buying large quantities of parts left right and center....etc and the cycle just continues.

It doesn't matter if the missing chip is a fancy MCU or just a stupid little LDO. If you don't have the chip, you can't make the board, you can't make the product.

We did not have that much excess chip fab capacity, so the market can't handle this many people buying up stock. Climbing out of this is also difficult since we actually need extra chip production capacity to fill up the appetite of the panicking chip buyers to the point where they don't have the space/budget to keep stockpiling parts. So i am pretty sure this is not going away for at least the next 3 years. Maybe even 5

[IconicPCB]

It wont last all that long...if history with toilet paper is an indication of anything.

[tszaboo]

No. And I've noticed that my usual resistors are out of stock.
If you check Digikey's DC-DC page, 85% of the ICs are out of stock. That's my benchmark now.

[mc172]

Nope. Just had a look at ordering some parts for a personal project today, a large amount of things I wanted, basically anything semiconductor flavour, are out of stock until at least this time next year. Looks like I'm redesigning it then. By the time I finish doing that, the parts I put in will be out of stock until the same time the following year.

[Berni]

Nope. Just had a look at ordering some parts for a personal project today, a large amount of things I wanted, basically anything semiconductor flavour, are out of stock until at least this time next year. Looks like I'm redesigning it then. By the time I finish doing that, the parts I put in will be out of stock until the same time the following year.

Yep indeed.

My new strategy involves plonking down the major chips on a schematic and then ordering them the same day.

Tho make sure what you see is actually orderable since i had lots of sites give me false hope. Like OctoPart says they have 1000 in stock but they actually have 0. Even worse is DigiKey telling me they have 100000 of some part in stock in the search results, yet when i click it the stock is actually 0.

The people at WinSource are even bigger jokesters that claim they have 2000 of a part in stock and at a pretty reasonable price too, yet when you actually order it they come around and say "Well actually we don't have that part at all". Then why the frig does your website say that you do?!

[Feynman]

No easing here. At least we are still able to find alternatives. For now.

[phil from seattle]

I've noticed that lately some jelly bean ICs have been in short supply. 74AHCT541s for example. Several LVC logic chips as well.  It's gotten to the point that I typically design in several different package types in case I have to switch due to shortages.

[Kleinstein]

The situation with µCs seems to have improved a little ( I have not looked too much at this, it depends on the type), but some more jelly bean parts seem to be on short supply and surprisingly long lead time. Still strange having to check availability of parts like DG201 or MCP6001 or look for alternatives.

[tszaboo]

The situation with µCs seems to have improved a little ( I have not looked too much at this, it depends on the type), but some more jelly bean parts seem to be on short supply and surprisingly long lead time. Still strange having to check availability of parts like DG201 or MCP6001 or look for alternatives.

I've looked at entire lineup of ST and Silicon labs micros that were out of stock.
I had to search for alternatives for 5 pin reset controllers. Those are the worst, there is like 3 different pinout a dozen voltage level, and you have to search for the exact part number to find an alternative. And then debate if a 2.67V part would be OK instead of the 2.9C because that's the only one in stock.

[BreakingOhmsLaw]

The situation is still getting worse. We have many disgruntled customers because we use STM32 MCU in a lot of our products.
Still better than 32-but PICs, which are pretty much impossible to get.
Power conversion chios are really bad too. We've redesiged our battery packs for the third time now. Every time we do that, we have to redo the entire certification for them, meaning another 3-month delay. Quality discretes are also getting affected now, with orders bouncing here and there.

[AndyC_772]

Try finding anything CAN bus related.

Any CAN transceiver that will run from 3.3V, and doesn't require a 5V supply, is unavailable. (Please, prove me wrong!!)

Same goes for any CAN bus ESD protection device suitable for use on a 24V vehicle. Want to make something that plugs into a bus or truck's CAN bus? Forget it.