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Global chip shortage

The Big Picture Place
Rover110
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Global chip shortage

#421403

Postby Rover110 » June 22nd, 2021, 2:43 pm

I know I don't read all of lemon fool, so please forgive me if this has been discussed elsewhere.

I have heard on a few news reports that some car production is likely to be delayed due to a global chip shortage. I guess we don't manufacture much in the UK nowadays, but I feel this might have been underplayed, and that many consumer items (with their ubiquitous "intelligence") will also become scarce. From what I have read, this is due to Covid shut-downs, with some chip manufacturers failing to anticipate when or how quickly demand would return.

Chips I'm familiar with, e.g. the stm32 family of microcontrollers, have gone from suppliers having thousands in stock to no availability for the next 6 months or possibly a year. And this isn't just the one or two that I use in my production, but pretty much the entire range as (where possible) manufacturers switch from using the cheapest part to whichever-part-is-available-and-fits.

I have no way of knowing if anyone is stockpiling silicon chips in the hope of getting inflated prices. And maybe the "big" customers (including China) get preferential deliveries under these circumstances.

But I think many small-scale manufacturers are going to struggle as a result of not being able to make what they can easily sell.

- Rover

Urbandreamer
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Re: Global chip shortage

#421419

Postby Urbandreamer » June 22nd, 2021, 3:49 pm

Rover110 wrote:From what I have read, this is due to Covid shut-downs, with some chip manufacturers failing to anticipate when or how quickly demand would return.


The situation is FAR more complex than that. For example making computer chips needs quite a lot of pure water. There is a bit of a drought in the area causing supply issues.
Tiawan is by FAR the bigest chip maker in the world. Do a search on "semiconductor drought".

Then of course there is the increase in the demand for chips for consumer computation. Something to do with people working from home. It really doesn't matter if demand returns if you have switched to producing something else instead. Not that the world is flooded with GPU or CPU's, just that demand has increased. Try a search on "gpu shortage tiawan".

Of course the fact that we are making more electric cars won't help the situation. They need far more in the way of chips than petrol cars. Again we see a demand increase, although I think that the other two reasons have far more effect.

What newspaper were you reading? Not that any of them are above poor reporting.

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Re: Global chip shortage

#421420

Postby kiloran » June 22nd, 2021, 4:05 pm

Urbandreamer wrote:Of course the fact that we are making more electric cars won't help the situation. They need far more in the way of chips than petrol cars.

I'm not sure that's true. About 15-20 years ago, the company I worked for supplied MCUs and other chips to most car manufacturers and a typical Mercedes or BMW model had over 20 microcontrollers (one per window, electronic ignition, ABS, entertainment, satnav, aircon, etc etc etc). Goodness knows how many they have these days. I can't believe that BEVs use that many more chips than ICE, most chips are non-powertrain so are common to both.
But I've been retired from semiconductors for 12 years now, so things may be different these days.

--kiloran

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Re: Global chip shortage

#421421

Postby scrumpyjack » June 22nd, 2021, 4:09 pm

So it really is Chips with everything! :D

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Re: Global chip shortage

#421424

Postby Urbandreamer » June 22nd, 2021, 4:34 pm

kiloran wrote: most chips are non-powertrain so are common to both.
But I've been retired from semiconductors for 12 years now, so things may be different these days.

--kiloran


Jim Feldhan, president of Semico Research, said that standard vehicles today have an average of just under $400 of semiconductors for all electronics systems in vehicles. “With electric cars. the figure pushes up to $2,000 with all the power MOSFETs and other chips.

https://electronics-sourcing.com/2018/0 ... utomakers/

It's worth pointing out that a single power MOSFET contains enough chip material to make significant quantities of other chips.

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Re: Global chip shortage

#421430

Postby TUK020 » June 22nd, 2021, 5:17 pm

One other wrinkle:
In addition to a general shortage of supply in chip manufacturing, there was a major fire in a Renesas facility that was focused on automotive spec devices. The commentary that I read wasn't specific on numbers but seemed to imply this was a big chunk of capacity for this segment
So car components suffering more than other areas

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Re: Global chip shortage

#421435

Postby MrFoolish » June 22nd, 2021, 5:46 pm

Urbandreamer wrote:It's worth pointing out that a single power MOSFET contains enough chip material to make significant quantities of other chips.


The materials in semiconductors are dirt cheap and plentiful. The shortages stem from the shortages of manufacturing plant and equipment.

TUK020
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Re: Global chip shortage

#421437

Postby TUK020 » June 22nd, 2021, 5:55 pm

MrFoolish wrote:
Urbandreamer wrote:It's worth pointing out that a single power MOSFET contains enough chip material to make significant quantities of other chips.


The materials in semiconductors are dirt cheap and plentiful. The shortages stem from the shortages of manufacturing plant and equipment.

Yes, so its not the material itself, but the die are consumed in the manufacturing process, assuming that the process is usable for other devices (not so likely for power devices)

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Re: Global chip shortage

#421440

Postby Urbandreamer » June 22nd, 2021, 6:27 pm

MrFoolish wrote:
Urbandreamer wrote:It's worth pointing out that a single power MOSFET contains enough chip material to make significant quantities of other chips.


The materials in semiconductors are dirt cheap and plentiful. The shortages stem from the shortages of manufacturing plant and equipment.


Sure. After all they are usually made from silicon, which is just sand isn't it?

NO the "materials" are not cheap. First you have to purify your silicone. Then you have to grow it into a big single crystal. Then you have to cleanly slice and etch it. That's before you consider how you are going to dope it, what with and the purity of that.

https://www.waferworld.com/silicon-pric ... ng-wafers/

Oh, and wasn't I talking power MOSFETS or fast computer chips? Heat is a big thing with them. It's not that uncommon to use a silicon on sapphire wafer. Sapphire's cheap isn't it? After all it's only an oxide of aluminium.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_on_sapphire

Indeed given the price of aluminium one wonders why they don't use a cheaper compound. Diamond is a far better thermal solution and that's just carbon. You can make it from soot. As in make soot from the hydrocarbon methain.

https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2016/05/d ... ng-at.html

However in part you are right. There is a shortage of plant AND material. Because making the material is a process in itself.

MrFoolish
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Re: Global chip shortage

#421447

Postby MrFoolish » June 22nd, 2021, 7:13 pm

Urbandreamer wrote:However in part you are right. There is a shortage of plant AND material. Because making the material is a process in itself.


Indeed, I wasn't implying the materials side isn't complex. But I would hazard a guess that they can ramp up the materials side quicker than the ultra-fine geometry processing used on very high density logic ICs.

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Re: Global chip shortage

#437567

Postby WorldCupWilly » August 26th, 2021, 12:38 pm

MrFoolish wrote:
Urbandreamer wrote:It's worth pointing out that a single power MOSFET contains enough chip material to make significant quantities of other chips.


The materials in semiconductors are dirt cheap and plentiful. The shortages stem from the shortages of manufacturing plant and equipment.


...which is why ASML stock is up 110% over 1 year, 660% over the last 5 years.

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Re: Global chip shortage

#466959

Postby Albert90 » December 18th, 2021, 7:03 am

A global chip shortage has been looming for months, as major semiconductor manufacturers have been warning of a tight supply in 2020. But the coronavirus pandemic is making the problem much worse.

Factories in China—where most of the world's computer chips are made—have been closed or slowed due to the outbreak, limiting production. And that is causing prices for key chip components to surge.

The result is likely to be higher costs and shortages for everything from cellphones and laptops to cars and industrial machines. The market research firm Gartner forecasts that worldwide sales of semiconductors will rise just 1 percent this year, after growing more than 10 percent annually over the past few years.


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