501–510 of 741 posts
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.atlasobscura.com/articles/w...
It’s fun to imagine a shortage 100 years from now that isn’t even an iota of an idea yet.
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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…
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…
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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…
It doesn't matter for this, but it's definitely the case in the hobbyist segment. Look at how many people use Raspberry Pis for things better suited to a microcontroller.
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This is largely a result of just-in-time manufacturing. Companies hate holding on to inventory. Most companies now don’t hold on to any extra stock needed to manufacture their products. This is great for your finances in normal times. But don’t complain when there is a shortage and you literally have zero slack for delays and your factory sits idle — that’s the well-known drawback.
No, this is the result of people like Neill Ferguson forecasting that COVID would be multiple times worse than it turned out to be, and Governments and the media believing him. For example this report from March 2020 was highly influential and predicted 2.2 million deaths in the US in an 'unmitigated epidemic' scenario: https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/medicine/s... When in reality the official COVID…
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…
In other words if the economy "stops" in the automotive department, how fucked are we in general?
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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…
However, their software sucks (okay, so do all of the other options...), their peripherals are not as good as some of the other options (in particular I'm thinking of peripheral clock trees when I say this, among other things), and their availability is the _worst_.
Seriously, unless you're big enough that ST management actually knows your name, expect to have sudden availability issues with the STM32. This has been true for the last decade. It will remain true. (Many of these availability problems start at ST's wafer fab, so they're not shared by the other vendors.) I always advise clients who care about such things to consider other vendors.
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 think the reality of the economy is more obvious than any of this. In other words if the economy "stops" in the automotive department, how fucked are we in general?
I think a lot of folks underestimate how fabulously complicated it is to fab a chip. Yes, you can diy it in your garage, here's a wonderful implementation. http://sam.zeloof.xyz/first-ic/ But take a look at the specialized tools they used. Heck, think about proper handling of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrofluoric_acid and this is just a simple amp. imagine trying to make something with lots of gates? Making a si…
We are also dealing with a global logistics network that may rival microchips in complexity. Food, and fuel for the humans and planes, trains, trucks, ships and bicycles that are essential to get things places to keep the global economy functioning.
The material handling systems are a sight to behold. Most may not be aware, but automation rates of 95% and beyond are feasible in these facilities. Many times, a lot can be moved through the entire manufacturing process without a single human touching or even looking at it. The amount of code and engineering around the material handling system is a mind boggling expanse of complexity. When million dollar product is flying around at 30+mph overhead on robots, you tend to take your time and do it right.
Add on top of this the same time domain concerns you have in global logistics, but with far more acute consequences. It's probably ~OK if a cargo ship is 15 minutes late to port. If lots miss a special process timeout by the same duration, you are potentially looking at millions of dollars in scrap. These intervals can be as short as 30 minutes. Imagine trying to schedule high priority lots through special tools, intermixing with unrelated (but also urgent) manufacturing nodes, while also allowing for preventative and break-fix maintenance on these same tools.
By far, the most complex parts of these semiconductor manufacturing operations are the business rules for the overall manufacturing environment, followed closely by the IT infrastructure required to tie together tens of thousands of hyper-complex technology systems. You better believe this is the one time it 100% makes sense to use pub/sub messaging.
Oh and don't forget about all the HF acid, ultrapure water, EUV lasers, hyper-scale cleanrooms, exotic power distribution systems, et. al.
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I think the reality of the economy is more obvious than any of this. In other words if the economy "stops" in the automotive department, how fucked are we in general?
Seriously, assuming the economy is just as dependent as any motor is with "cogs and wheels" how dependent are we on our weakest parts?