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> Production of low-margin processors, such as those used to weigh clothes in a washing machine or toast bread in a smart toaster, has also been hit. While most

• jamiek88 5y ago
  My understanding is there is a substrate shortage as well as a foundry slot shortage.
  • jpm_sd 5y ago
    This is correct. The industry is currently constrained on everything from water to wafers, in addition to fab time slots. Everyone is panic buying too, so shortages are getting amplified.
    • formerly_proven 5y ago
      ... and while there is lots of "real" demand we also get the cryptocrazies exerting additional pressure not just on the finest and best silicon available, but now even on HDD/SSDs. Prices have already risen 50+ % in the last few weeks. F--- t---- m-----.
    • im3w1l 5y ago
      I'm a bit out of the loop. What is the cause of this? Since they are hitting multiple constraints at once I guess it's a demand spike?
      • smaryjerry 5y ago
        Not who you responded to but newly released consoles are tons of chips, having to stay home meant more people buyer gaming PCs as well, everyone who started working from home required tons of new hardware while their desktops at work go unused, and money flowed from governments like water so everyone has money to buy all these things at once. Then on the supply side you had basically everyone stop working for at least a couple months some longer not only out of restrictions on the ability to work but restrictions that make a lot of processes much less efficient plus fear of going to work on top, then you had no one willing to return to many jobs because unemployment benefits have lasted for over a year (rather than normally a few months) and unemployment pays higher than your typical minimum wage job anyways with even the current the extra $300 per week, which was an extra $600 per week for a long time as well. This also means people that used to spend their time on higher wage and producing jobs end up spending a lot of their time doing things they would normally delegate off because no one wants to work those jobs. If you look at chips they are just one of many industries all with shortages for similar reasons, chips are just the worst shortage of all, mainly from all the work from home needs. In 2020 last year my computers power supply died.. there wasn’t one available with 100 miles. I drove to every store within about 20 miles to try to get back online same day. Even online Newegg and Amazon were all sold out, I had to spend about triple normal to by a power supply that was way too much for what I needed and pay extra for shipping it quickly. Not the same as chips but it was a similar need and far fewer people are needing power supplies versus chips.
    • pitaj 5y ago
      Also assembly houses are way backed up
  • monocasa 5y ago
    And even then, process nodes aren't fungible. Taping out a design for a totally new (to you) node is probably at least a year of time. And for what? Will the chip shortage be over then anyway?
• simias 5y ago
  I don't know but maybe one of the factors is that given how cheap microntrollers have become it's not uncommon to use an "overpowered" integrated chip just for ease of development. Suppose that you have to drive some LEDs on a washing machine, do you bother developing some optimized bespoke circuitry with discrete components or do you just slap a ~2$ 100+MHz 32bit Cortex controller that will let you implement all the logic in C and just reflash if you find an issue?
  • alexc05 5y ago
    It makes me wonder if it would be possible to build a chip-manufacturing plant for any reasonable amount of money to produce these chips that don't need to be 7nm GPU powerhouses, but like the old clunker chips that can't get attention from the big guys. Almost like starting a "generics" business in pharma medication but for older chipsets. I'm sure there's a great trade to be had in producing the lower end stuff.
    • CoolGuySteve 5y ago
      I suspect the ultimate outcome of RISC-V is that it will be the commodity CPU the same way any fab can make DRAM.
    • reportingsjr 5y ago
      Most of the chips in these shortages are being produced on either older process nodes, or on slightly specialized nodes. The typical micro that's been hit by this is using anywhere from a 28nm to 180nm node. The trouble is, this is a temporary shortage, so it makes no sense to spend serious cash (you're talking hundreds of millions) to make a new fab when the demand won't be there in a year or two.
      • anonymouse008 5y ago
        > The trouble is, this is a temporary shortage, so it makes no sense to spend serious cash (you're talking hundreds of millions) to make a new fab when the demand won't be there in a year or two. While true, one could say it’s a bet on inflation to borrow dollars now for productive assets.
• jleahy 5y ago
  There’s still a limit to the production capacity available, these are still incredibly complex manufacturing processes, just not cutting edge. Personally my take away from that was “what is a smart toaster and why would anyone need that”.
• ajross 5y ago
  > why are there shortages for these basic chips? Can’t they be made anywhere, and more easily? Not really. Semiconductor fabs are built around "tools" from manufacturers like AMAT and Nikon. Those tool vendors make most of their money from selling new tools for fancy new processes, not supporting 20-year-old stuff. Eventually stuff breaks, and fabs have to offline these older processes. The way this works in the tech industry is that "chips" are actually software, so if your old manufacturer isn't keeping up you resynthesize your VHDL or Verilog for a new fab, rev your board design or whatever, and keep going. But other industries aren't so agile. They have older designs without design teams to support them, or even chip designs that they retain only as masks and not HDL. Those parts don't port cleanly to newer high-volume logic.
  • gostsamo 5y ago
    Actually, ASML provides lifetime support for their machines. I don't know for the rest.
    • parsimo2010 5y ago
      But lifetime support doesn’t help if the parts for your machine aren’t available anymore. If your 20 year old machine breaks and there aren’t parts available to fix it, you might get offered an equivalent replacement. If your old chip masks are incompatible with the replacement machine, you’re not immediately able to make what you need. So for some companies, having lifetime support might not help with the manufacturing slowdown when an old machine breaks.
      • rhodozelia 5y ago
        The parts were made by humans once, they can be made by humans again. The only question is is it worth it
        • salawat 5y ago
          Underrated comment. Though the "worth it" bit is the trick. In my estimation these older parts that "just werk" should be getting inherited and iterated on as a public good. The idea that means of production should phase into public trust tends to get everyone in a tizzy though. I'd like to see a public "foundry of last resort" that focuses on being able to make anything.
• varispeed 5y ago
  It is a new Bitcoin for Chinese businessmen and they buy up all stocks and stockpile. If you go on Chinese sites, you can buy any chips you want even thousands of them. Of course you'll pay 10x the price and have a high chance getting a counterfeit product.