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The global chip shortage is starting to have consequences

cnbc.com

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Re: The global chip shortage is starting to have consequences

#261

Post by leetrout »

tomrod wrote: post #248
dahfizz wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I definitely agree that car size inflation is a real problem. Cars are too big and getting bigger every year. That said, "good visibility" is not a replacement for safety tech. The sensors and cameras in a car are always going to be better at spotting danger than a human for things like blind spot monitoring and backup cameras. You sound a bit like the teachers that would drill mental math because "you won't always h…

> Cars are too big and getting bigger every year. /me waves from my tiny Corolla, slightly larger than my 2002 Prius, which a Camry has shrunk in size to meet relative to the 2009 model.

Yep. I noticed that as well when I bought my 2018 Corolla.

The size comparison to a 2003ish Camry is very similar.

2003 Camry:

189″ L x 71″ W x 58″ H

2018 Corolla:

183″ L x 70″ W x 57″ H

Re: The global chip shortage is starting to have consequences

#262

Post by ndiddy »

neltnerb wrote: post #193
smiley1437 wrote: post #58

Interestingly, there is an embedded video in that article that explains the issue specific to the automotive shortage - it's because the automotive industry cancelled a lot of chip orders in anticipation of low vehicle demand and that caused chip makers to reduce their production for the kinds of chips that go into cars, and now it takes time to ramp back up: https://www.cnbc.com/video/2021/03/02/how-the-global-compu…

I get that this is a potential big problem, but I had to stop reading when the dog washing company blamed needing to respin a new board on a chip being out of stock due to this. I'm sorry, but if you aren't buying enough chips to build all the boards you want to build of a revision, this is just what happens, chip shortage or no. Stuff gets obsoleted all the time, it doesn't take a chip shortage. Blaming a black swan…

Chips don't suddenly get obsoleted though, they get put in "not recommended for new designs" for at least a year or two beforehand, and when the chip maker plans to phase the chip out they typically give a "last time buy" notice at least a month or two before it gets discontinued.

Re: The global chip shortage is starting to have consequences

#263

Post by fatbird »

samfisher83 wrote: post #254
smiley1437 wrote: post #58

Interestingly, there is an embedded video in that article that explains the issue specific to the automotive shortage - it's because the automotive industry cancelled a lot of chip orders in anticipation of low vehicle demand and that caused chip makers to reduce their production for the kinds of chips that go into cars, and now it takes time to ramp back up: https://www.cnbc.com/video/2021/03/02/how-the-global-compu…

Its the whole JIT inventories stuff they preach in business school. Toyota actually stocked enough chips to handle something like this.

I'm starting to think historians will look back at our age and say "it was the MBAs who doomed them", much the same way that historians look at China's history and point to an excess of court eunechs as the reason this or that dynasty fell.

Re: The global chip shortage is starting to have consequences

#264

Post by beaconstudios »

samfisher83 wrote: post #254
smiley1437 wrote: post #58

Interestingly, there is an embedded video in that article that explains the issue specific to the automotive shortage - it's because the automotive industry cancelled a lot of chip orders in anticipation of low vehicle demand and that caused chip makers to reduce their production for the kinds of chips that go into cars, and now it takes time to ramp back up: https://www.cnbc.com/video/2021/03/02/how-the-global-compu…

Its the whole JIT inventories stuff they preach in business school. Toyota actually stocked enough chips to handle something like this.

It's funny because systems dynamics have been known in supply chain optimisation for like 4 decades and the research itself is from the 60S. JIT is an obvious case of overoptimising leading to fragility so the fact that its accepted as the ideal is ludicrous.

Re: The global chip shortage is starting to have consequences

#265

Post by simias »

judge2020 wrote: post #114
simias wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

With the amount of horrible infotainment systems in the wild i honestly doubt they’re using overpowered chips. I’m sure any consumer grade APU (ie. CPU with an iGPU) from the past 5 years would do better than the chips currently in cars.

I've worked in that industry. The problem with infotainment systems (be it in planes or in cars) is that they're usually designed years before the planes/cars enter production, they have very strong constraints in terms of price and component choice (you need automotive-certified parts, not smartphone parts, and they need to last a long time even if they have to go through Arizona summers) so they're already outdated by the time the car comes out.

These systems are also usually integrated with other systems to provide additional functionality using largely custom code that somewhat prevents quick iteration and code reuse, especially since the people writing the code are largely not in-house but various contractors (that's where a company like Tesla has the upper hand since I suppose that they control the software stack a lot more than the average).

Beyond that these systems suffer heavily from design-by-committee and worse yet, committees whose core competence really isn't computer UI.

Re: The global chip shortage is starting to have consequences

#266

Post by liquidify »

jandrese wrote: post #191
oblak wrote: post #181

So, even though Intel has been incredibly profitable for many years, they Gelsinger is asking for US and EU government support because... uh, uncertain times? That it? How much did they ask Isreal for this 600 million investment? [0] [0] https://www.israel21c.org/intel-announces-600-million-boost-... The EU should invest in AMD and build fabs without Intel if we are to be "independent"

It’s not hard to see Intel struggling in the future as AMD has produced a better architecture and Apple is starting to compete in the space.

Until Apple unlocks their chips (see never) from their own ecosystem and starts selling server chips and chips that other people can build systems with, they are not really 'competing' in the space.

Re: The global chip shortage is starting to have consequences

#267

Post by crote »

neltnerb wrote: post #193
smiley1437 wrote: post #58

Interestingly, there is an embedded video in that article that explains the issue specific to the automotive shortage - it's because the automotive industry cancelled a lot of chip orders in anticipation of low vehicle demand and that caused chip makers to reduce their production for the kinds of chips that go into cars, and now it takes time to ramp back up: https://www.cnbc.com/video/2021/03/02/how-the-global-compu…

I get that this is a potential big problem, but I had to stop reading when the dog washing company blamed needing to respin a new board on a chip being out of stock due to this. I'm sorry, but if you aren't buying enough chips to build all the boards you want to build of a revision, this is just what happens, chip shortage or no. Stuff gets obsoleted all the time, it doesn't take a chip shortage. Blaming a black swan…

I'm very loosely involved in the highly customized keyboard business, think runs of a couple hundred units.

One vendor is having trouble finding any chip to design for. The software stack supports a couple of dozen STM32 chip series, but none of them are even remotely available. I've seen a lead time of over 11 months. Before COVID, pretty much every single chip was in stock almost all of the time.

Respinning a board isn't too difficult, but good luck doing that if there's no chip to respin it for.

Re: The global chip shortage is starting to have consequences

#268

Post by giaour »

heisenbit wrote: post #243
mywittyname wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They've been low for a while now too. As annoying as it is to have a $670 car payment each month, you really can't beat 0% interest on a $40k loan. Especially in a market where the average monthly return on $40k in stocks has been pretty substantial.

0% loan on the sticker price. The goal of coming in with cash is to get as far as possible below the sticker price.

Don’t dealerships make a good percentage of their profits from finance charges? The last time I bought a car, it took an hour of cajoling to get the cash price of a three year lease

Re: The global chip shortage is starting to have consequences

#269

Post by Mavvie »

sokoloff wrote: post #228
ineedasername wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most new cars still suck / Do not offer meaningful new features That really depends on how old your car is. I generally buy instead of lease, and run the car until it starts having regular problems. As a result, my car is 12 years old, and any new one from the last few years is a significant upgrade in terms of features. I don't really want a monthly car payment again, but I'm almost looking forward to when my curren…

I tend to buy around 4-6 years old and run them for 10-12 years as well, which is limited by New England tinworm from the road salt we use rather than mechanical issues. Beyond airbags and ABS (both now ubiquitous), I don’t need the new feature faff. I just need something that will start everyday and that I can do the basic maintenance on. Fortunately, that’s still easily available and cheap in the 5-ish year-old “th…

I feel like each year cars get way safer. It started with blind spot detectors/cameras, and modern cars will even brake automatically and keep you in your lane (or at least warn you if you leave it).

Maybe new features like self-driving aren't as interesting, but I would buy a new car instead of a used one just for the perceived improved safety.

I don't know if there's any research showing that these features actually reduce accidents/fatalities though (plausibly if they malfunctioned it could be worse than nothing)

Re: The global chip shortage is starting to have consequences

#270

Post by xadhominemx »

ajross wrote: post #241
xadhominemx wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Eventually stuff breaks, and fabs have to offline these older processes. Absolutely not. You just made this up.

The first is a statement of the third law of thermodynamics. The second clause is just obviously true. Go call up Fujitsu and try to order more of a chip they made for you in 1.5um in 1988.

Yes of course the equipment breaks down but older equipment is easy to repair. It is very rare for a fab to be decommissioned and the equipment scrapped - in fact I have never heard of this happening to any production facility with 6” or larger wafers. That equipment will go to de-bottlenecking at some other fab and net production capacity for the node will increase.

Obviously many very old chips are out of production but not because the equipment broke down and was never repaired.

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