Chip shortage

[Captainant 27835]

27 minutes ago, DallasHorn26 said:

I was talking to a guy that worked at the GM plant in Arlington the other day and he mentioned that  this is there biggest holdup is in production. That's why car lots look empty right now.

There's definitely going to be an interesting post-mortem with what happened to the auto market and chips, this bloomberg story is a decent primer on the differing sides. From the article:

Quote

Because of carmakers’ “just-in-time” manufacturing model, their suppliers worried about quick inventory buildups and canceled orders originally planned for foundries in the first half of 2020, the people said. At the same time, foundries began seeing a surge in demand for gadget chips after Apple Inc., Samsung Electronics Co. and Chinese brands prepped an avalanche of 5G devices including the iPhone 12, which require as much as 40% more silicon content as 4G handsets

But basically it seems like the auto manufacturers reduced orders for 2020 to avoid excess stock in their supply chain (inefficiency BAD says shareholders), and the excess capacity got bought by device manufacturers who saw soaring demand during COVID. When the auto makers wanted to ramp back up, they lost their spot in line 

[gyroprotagonist 2595]

JIT works until it doesn't

I think the bigger development will be how governments start to view these fabs as 'strategic assets' 

I went on a sales call to the NSA when i worked at AMD.  They used to have their own fab to make their own CPUs but could not keep up with the pace of innovation due to the sheer cost of installing new tech to keep shrinking the transistor size.   I know places like Northrup Grumman have their own fabs, but it's usually to make much simpler/older IC. 

Some Tom Clancy stuff for sure, but say China gobbles up Taiwan and we are basically at war with them.  I could see where the US gov would 'ask' Intel/TI fabs to make certain silicon the gov/army needed like Ford built B-24s during ww2.  It would get even more complicated with multi-national fabs from Samsung/TSCM etc.. that are on US soil.  Fun stuff to think about.

[TwiceHorn 31573]

That's an interesting factoid about NSA being in the sc/ic business.  Makes sense, but it never occurred to me.

TI had a fair amount of fab capacity that's now mostly under the control of Raytheon.  I wonder if Raytheon decommissioned most of it.

Edited April 7, 2021 by TwiceHorn

[Judge Roybeanbag 11821]

45 minutes ago, gyroprotagonist said:

JIT works until it doesn't

I think the bigger development will be how governments start to view these fabs as 'strategic assets' 

I went on a sales call to the NSA when i worked at AMD.  They used to have their own fab to make their own CPUs but could not keep up with the pace of innovation due to the sheer cost of installing new tech to keep shrinking the transistor size.   I know places like Northrup Grumman have their own fabs, but it's usually to make much simpler/older IC. 

Some Tom Clancy stuff for sure, but say China gobbles up Taiwan and we are basically at war with them.  I could see where the US gov would 'ask' Intel/TI fabs to make certain silicon the gov/army needed like Ford built B-24s during ww2.  It would get even more complicated with multi-national fabs from Samsung/TSCM etc.. that are on US soil.  Fun stuff to think about.

Try getting cards and chassis conformally coated now.  Shit takes forever.

[gyroprotagonist 2595]

1 hour ago, TwiceHorn said:

That's an interesting factoid about NSA being in the sc/ic business.  Makes sense, but it never occurred to me.

TI had a fair amount of fab capacity that's now mostly under the control of Raytheon.  I wonder if Raytheon decommissioned most of it.

I bet they either have to keep it operational or at least operational-ready for set amount of time.  I used to work at a place that got subbed gov contracts for IC packaging and they are still using chips that were the backbone for stuff like paveway missile systems but we were converting from milspec hermetically sealed ceramic to cheaper commercial plastic packages.   That company essentially bought one of the Raytheon lines because they did not want the expense of keeping it running.  Another time they took over mfg from another sub that Motorola used for a gov contract.  Even though we set up the mfg on our own machines, we had to take in all these older machines that the process was originally set up on 'just in case'.   "Russians Uncle Sam dont take a dump, son, without a plan" indeed.

there are actually businesses where it's their job to store backup wafers/packages for military/ITAR chips hermetically sealed up 'just in case'.  The gov contracts for ITAR stuff usually have very long (20 years) keep-ready clauses where mfgs are supposed to maintain the line/capability to mfg if needed.  

It would be interesting to see it would ever come to "fuck your pentium, bro; we need 500,000 camera ICs for our soldier's HUDs made pronto"

 

[Underdog 28795]

On 4/6/2021 at 9:18 AM, gyroprotagonist said:

yeah, way back in the day i used to work for AMD

Fab25?  

Former Fab14/Lonestar alum myself, laidoff in 2002. 

[gyroprotagonist 2595]

4 minutes ago, Underdog said:

Fab25?  

Former Fab14/Lonestar alum myself, laidoff in 2002. 

nah, i was basically this guy.  i dealt with IBM (lol) Compaq (lol) Gateway (lol) HP and the like plus motherboard mfgs for the processor and north/south bridge lines.  sorta the VOC back to the fab.  was riffed as well in 2002.  good times