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Lead time for new Intel NIC orders is quoted around 52 weeks

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Re: Lead time for new Intel NIC orders is quoted around 52 weeks

#121

Just in time manufacturing contributes a lot to this shortage. We rely so much on integrated supply chain logistics, the pandemic clearly brought in to focus the "optimizations" of JIT manufacturing. The lack of local supply pools as buffer is so short sighted.

If computer network technology had been built on the same shortsighted business logic we would never have had the internet..

Imagine a link-layer protocol without any buffers, no retransmissions or any kind of resilience, built on the most optimistic estimates; that’s essentially what the “business world” has built with their irrational philosophy based around “the market”..

Re: Lead time for new Intel NIC orders is quoted around 52 weeks

#122
post #110
post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

JIT assumes a steady state, so squeezes all the buffering out of the system. But buffers are useful. > It’s not like people start dying on the streets Well, that’s a good example: there was a huge rise in need for masks and other protective gear about 20 months ago and the supply chain couldn’t handle it. That was why people were encouraged to use makeshift cloth masks, to leave the surgical masks and respirators for…

I know the benefits of having a buffer but do we need buffers everywhere? As in your example, wouldn't be much better to have a buffer in the hospitals(or maybe some kind of regional emergency organisations) as a precaution for an outbreak instead of advocating for buffers across the textile industry? I like the way you put it, JIT simply pushes the buffer elsewhere. However, this seems like a very good thing to have…

> I know the benefits of having a buffer but do we need buffers everywhere? As in your example, wouldn't be much better to have a buffer in the hospitals(or maybe some kind of regional emergency organisations) as a precaution for an outbreak instead of advocating for buffers across the textile industry?

The problem with that specific kind of stockpile buffer is that it can become quickly depleted. No mask stockpile would have been sufficient for the COVID pandemic.

From my layman's perspective, you need stockpiles and excess production capacity to weather a supply shock. It's sort of like backup power in a data center: you have UPS batteries (stockpiled power) to fill the gap until the generators (extra production capacity) can come online.

Re: Lead time for new Intel NIC orders is quoted around 52 weeks

#123
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Literally building a brand new hospital. We built multiple temporary hospitals in the UK too. And albeit not so widely reported, temporary morgues. To be honest I assumed a whole bunch of countries were doing this...

The reporting on this has been very weird. UK news had massive coverage of deaths in Italy, then when it started hitting the UK hard, it went invisible. I'm not sure the UK emergency Nightingale hospitals were actually _used_, since (obviously) you can repurpose a building but you can't just find a few thousand healthcare staff at short notice. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-56327214

I don't think the Nightingales were used much, but that was mostly because the existing hospitals managed to free up more beds than originally anticipated and all the available staff ended up there. Naturally, the government got endless flack for this, as is often the case when a government puts measures into place for a contingency that doesn't come to pass. (Also, relying on freeing up beds may not have been a good decision in hindsight - one of the ways this was achieved was by aggressively kicking people with potential hospital-acquired Covid infections out into care homes full of people at high risk of dying if they caught Covid, with ugly consequences.)

Re: Lead time for new Intel NIC orders is quoted around 52 weeks

#124
post #112

Work laptop was quoted today as delivery in "up to" 24 weeks (with well-informed people saying it might well take that long). And I cannot find anyone with Raspberry Pi CM3+ compute modules with delivery before April 2022.

Honest question: How can everyone be short of chips? I understand that e.g. car makers reduced their orders and their capacity was given to other manufacturers so they are kind of screwed but surely since the overall capacity got increased (albeit by a relatively small amount) then some manufacturers should have stuff.

As far as I can see, pretty much everyone who uses electronics seems to be not just "a bit short" but royally screwed at the moment.

Re: Lead time for new Intel NIC orders is quoted around 52 weeks

#125
post #112

Work laptop was quoted today as delivery in "up to" 24 weeks (with well-informed people saying it might well take that long). And I cannot find anyone with Raspberry Pi CM3+ compute modules with delivery before April 2022.

indeed, I'm shopping for a laptop and Hp firefly 14 g8 has est. delivery mid march

Re: Lead time for new Intel NIC orders is quoted around 52 weeks

#126

Currently working on a new design for a client, it's quite a pain. Lots of things, even mundane things like connectors and such are out of stock / low stock and usually quite a bit more expensive.

How are non-ICs in short-supply? Did I miss a whole story about supply chain problems or is it literally that overall demand has maxed out overall supply and most people don't have the means to increase production?

Re: Lead time for new Intel NIC orders is quoted around 52 weeks

#127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I saw the time lapsed footage of a emergency hospital being built in Wuhan in only 10 days I turned to the wife and said there is some big $hit coming. Three weeks later we had 4 cases from Italian tourists - it all went pear shaped from there - 2.91M infected and 87,819 deaths.

China was also welding people in their homes, I don’t think they should be used as a barometer of how serious something is

“Welding people into their homes” sure doesn’t sound like something you do if you don’t think things are super fucking serious if you ask me.

Re: Lead time for new Intel NIC orders is quoted around 52 weeks

#128
post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a niche part and you shouldn't be surprised if it's discontinued soon. Think about migrating your design. I'm starting to see end-of-life notices for a lot of parts that I wouldn't normally see at their age, but if they're low runners that would totally make sense. If you see lead times longer than a year, that's your early warning.

I imagine one end result of this supply squeeze is that a lot of bespoke or legacy parts will be finally removed from designs that have up until now been "good enough". To cite the most common example, vehicle manufacturers' most common supply pain-point is ICs built on a ~200nm process, which was state of the art between 1996-2000. I understand it makes sense to move slower for chips embedded in long-life devices, a…

> To cite the most common example, vehicle manufacturers' most common supply pain-point is ICs built on a ~200nm process, which was state of the art between 1996-2000.

I'm a total layman, but that might be misunderstanding "state of the art." Larger feature sizes may be better for their applications if they allow the parts to be more reliable.

Re: Lead time for new Intel NIC orders is quoted around 52 weeks

#129
post #99
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I keep seeing that argument every single time and keep wondering, isn’t there reason to implement JIT? Something like cost benefits outweigh the resilience risks? It’s not like people start dying on the streets, simply things are getting expensive and hard to get during disturbances. Are there calculations demonstrating that JIT the risks of optimization are more harmful than helpful in the long run?

Well only a decade ago Moore's law ensured that keeping any amount of stock on CPUs/GPU/memory would cost you a lot of money, as that would depreciate fast . JIT was a good idea until it wasn't

> Well only a decade ago Moore's law ensured that keeping any amount of stock on CPUs/GPU/memory would cost you a lot of money, as that would depreciate fast.

This clearly holded for PC components, but rather not for, say, microcontrollers for conservatively developed products with a much longer service life and/or duration of sell.

Consider, for example, a stock of microcontrollers for an industrial machinery that

* will be used for 20 years by the customers,

* will be sold for the next 10 years,

* after these 10 years, for the remaining lifetime of the machine, the customer will still be able to buy spare parts.

Re: Lead time for new Intel NIC orders is quoted around 52 weeks

#130

Smart business people will take this as a lesson about the dangers of zero-inventory manufacturing. Unscrupulous business people will continue running the business at high risk, knowing that they will probably be gone by the time a problem arises. Very smart leaders will use this as an opportunity to think about how to stop their companies from forgetting someone's involvement with a project or process during interna…

> Unscrupulous business people will continue running the business at high risk, knowing that they will probably be gone by the time a problem arises.

Or they can just price gouge. Heads I win, tails you lose.

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