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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

#401

Post by 45ure »

robomartin wrote: post #285
neltnerb wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 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 ... > if you aren't buying enough chips to build all the boards you want to build of a revision Friendly advice: If you are going to be a consultant to industry, don't post comments like this. As someone who has been manufacturing tech products for over thirty years, my first reaction to…

>It too me years to even be able to talk about this episode of my life to anyone. It was horrible.

I am glad you found the courage to share a bleak chapter in your life, and for being unflinchingly honest. I hope it was cathartic ─ your lived experience will serve as an extremely valuable lesson for those of us, who might encounter such circumstances.

Re: The global chip shortage is starting to have consequences

#402

Post by novok »

newsclues wrote: post #343
istjohn wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't disagree, but there would be a political shitstorm if you tried to take away their trucks.

Not doing things for fear of political shitstorms is a large part of why everything is so broken these days. Terrible leadership!

I don't do certain unpopular things at work because I know it will be a political shitstorm, and even if I try to, everyone else will not cooperate and I could possibly lose my job or not get promoted. That is why. They usually cannot even do it if they wanted to.

If your voters will vote you out because you do unpopular things, that's democracy at work.

Re: The global chip shortage is starting to have consequences

#403

Post by stemthirtywat »

crote wrote: post #267
neltnerb wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I wonder if that sort of library compatibility might be the reason for the shortages in those particular part lines?

It looks easy to find STM32L0x2 chips in stock. Those are not supported by the QMK firmware, but they are very similar in terms of peripherals and features to the supported (and hard-to-find) STM32F0x2 lines. The main differences are a lower minimum operating voltage and more power management options, IIRC.

Re: The global chip shortage is starting to have consequences

#404

Post by liaukovv »

nerdponx wrote: post #347
ipqk wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't have to "take away" the trucks, but just make them more impractical: - sales tax on cars/trucks is by weight and exponentially increases the heavier the vehicle gets - increase taxes on gasoline - require a special license to operate a vehicle over XXXX lbs. - rewrite laws or encourage DAs to prosecute drivers that injure other people in cars or pedestrians even if it's unintentional - illegal to have passe…

People will wail and cry and scream about their freedom being taken from them...

Because it is in fact taking away their freedom

Re: The global chip shortage is starting to have consequences

#405

Post by throwawayboise »

ineedasername wrote: post #378
pfranz wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never heard of Carvana, but test drives aren't something we should need dealerships for. Having 1 or 2 cars of each is all you need. Technically a low-end model would be fine, but I can see them only offering the highest end model to upsell features. Then you do what brick-and-mortars have complained about for years and order exactly what you want online. Personally, I think renting a car for a medium term is wa…

I'm not saying things couldn't work differently, only that the incentives don't align to make that very easy to accomplish. Tesla did it because they had the advantage of looking at the current status quo and saying "Yeah, no thanks, we'll retain control of whole process." I get what you mean about certain aspects, but I would not describe the process of buying a car in that way. I don't know what you mean. I don't t…

> Unless you really insist on driving the exact car you're buying

I certainly do. I thought this was the norm?

Re: The global chip shortage is starting to have consequences

#406

Post by salawat »

newsclues wrote: post #343
istjohn wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't disagree, but there would be a political shitstorm if you tried to take away their trucks.

Not doing things for fear of political shitstorms is a large part of why everything is so broken these days. Terrible leadership!

Politics is about figuring out what to expend community energy on that'll actually A) Work And B ) Not have to be undone the next time the winds change.

Terrible leadership I can agree with wholeheartedly though.

Re: The global chip shortage is starting to have consequences

#407

Post by gizmodo59 »

booleanbetrayal wrote: post #388

What new fab facilities are currently being spun up in the US? And if the answer is "few," then why?

Building a fab takes lot of time. Plus you need to hire the right talent in the same region. And by the time you can do it may be we will be past this supply issue. (Or may be that’s why we don’t do it now? Not sure)

Re: The global chip shortage is starting to have consequences

#408

Post by d136o »

tpmx wrote: post #321
d136o wrote: post #310

I recommend this read about the origins of the semiconductor industry in Silicon Valley: They Would Be Gods [1]. Making a chip has been something that has been done completely methodically since their invention (I wonder if the less disciplined or less methodical and messy shops simply went out of business). Add decades of automation and scaling in every part of that process and we get to AMSL machines sold for hundr…

> Making a chip has been something that has been done completely methodically since their invention The yield improvement process seems like it has a lot common with e.g. baking and intuition.

Sure, at the invention/research step, after that’s done it’s all about sequencing the exact series of steps (robots following the recipe) to get to the output.

Re: The global chip shortage is starting to have consequences

#409

Post by robomartin »

neltnerb wrote: post #387
robomartin wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 ... > if you aren't buying enough chips to build all the boards you want to build of a revision Friendly advice: If you are going to be a consultant to industry, don't post comments like this. As someone who has been manufacturing tech products for over thirty years, my first reaction to…

I'm sincerely sorry for offending you so badly.

You did not offend me at all. I'm not a kid. I am just offering a mirror from the perspective of someone who has actually lived the kind of thing you are proposing.

Look at it a different way: Back then I thought what you are proposing was sensible enough that I spent two million dollars to execute precisely that strategy. I ended-up losing a business that I built over ten years because of that decision at a time when it was the worst decision one could make.

In other words, if I called you a fool I would be calling my younger self an even bigger fool. I actually believed it enough to effectively destroy my company and affect my life for years. I am not calling you a fool. I am sharing a lesson I learned the hard way and simply warning readers not to assume they understand reality without the benefit of experience. Sadly some of this stuff we only learn after the fact, not before. I can't blame you at all for not understanding it.

EDIT: If there's emotion in my tone, please forgive me, ten years later and this still hurts. The experience put me in the hospital more than once and nearly cost us everything, we were horribly close from losing our home and everything we built over decades.

Re: The global chip shortage is starting to have consequences

#410

Post by neltnerb »

baybal2 wrote: post #365
neltnerb wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 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. What you are suggesting is quite impractical, unless you are a really big business with cash, which can simply direct order components. Small businesses, even in Shenzhen, a place inundated with supply chain abundance, always have to either…

I agree and have experienced that too. Even without obsoleted parts, stuff will be impossible to find all the sudden, particularly specialty components. Heck, I've had vendors who simply had fabs that caught fire... but I always have a laundry list of substitutes that are pin compatible when humanly possible, which is for almost all the parts on the board. For the ones that aren't possible, that's a much smaller BOM to buy ahead of time if you absolutely have to keep the PCB design the same.

The caveat is that because MCUs are not standardized you frequently get screwed over so my replacement part list is a collection of versions of the part with different amounts of memory that are designed to be pin-compatible. Sometimes that isn't enough, and often companies aren't big enough to negotiate a guaranteed supply. But if you're not big enough to negotiate a guaranteed supply you just have to deal with buying enough of the parts to keep you in business long enough to create a new revision before you literally run out of stuff to sell...

I sympathize with the other comment berating me at length for being flippant about this, and am genuinely sorry for being flippant especially in light of their experience with the opposite issue (buying stuff and getting screwed by customers canceling orders). But I was talking about a dog washing startup. A dog washing startup vocally complaining to the news about needing to respin one board because of a supply chain interruption.

Yes, there is FCC and other testing you have to do if you significantly modify a board, so I'm not sitting here oblivious to the challenges involved in a respin. My response was to them being a poster child for the people suffering from this issue. Those of you who cannot find any component that will do the job have my absolute sympathy and I apologize for not being more verbose.

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