6 ms·

This is an extremely low volume prototype run. You can get those scheduled on short notice. Fabs love them because they can do process optimization using them,

This is an extremely low volume prototype run. You can get those scheduled on short notice. Fabs love them because they can do process optimization using them, without impacting production customers. They're ridiculously expensive per-die and you commit to accept a much higher failure rate than normal. ST can and is making microcontrollers. It's just that they've sold their production for a year ahead, before it's even been manufactured. Car companies fucked everyone over by flipping a large volume of orders back and forth causing bullwhip effect on the whole industry, and lots of knock-on effects in other industries who suddenly got told (occasionally too late) that they need to plan their inventory a year ahead because they can't get anything at short notice anymore. Car companies vehicle production volume is tens of millions, but each vehicle has thousands to tens of thousands of ICs. The six months you are mentioning are not the capacity period, they are the lead times involved. I don't want to repeat the whole story but I wrote a comment about this on another thread. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26659709 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26659709

ohazi 5y ago
> Fabs love them because they can do process optimization using them, without impacting production customers. I didn't realize that, but it makes a lot of sense. I assumed that they acted more like the downstream manufacturers that I'm used to dealing with, that don't even want to talk to you unless they think you're going to place a huge order.
jankeymeulen 5y ago
Thousands to tens of thousands per car? I think you're off by an order of magnitude.
- mschuster91 5y ago
  Almost everything in a car has a number of chips. Power regulations, communication buses... and in electric cars with thousands of batteries, at least one chip per battery for protection.
  - osamagirl69 5y ago
    This is blatantly false, unless you are confusing battery for an assembled battery pack. In EVs each battery management IC can run somewhere in the range of 4-14 cells in series per chip, and they almost universally run banks of up to 100 cells in parallel. For example, in the tesla model s the pack is comprised into submodules of 76 cells in parallel and 6 of those groups in series per management chip--so only one management chip per 456 cells.
  - dragontamer 5y ago
    Electric cars have ONE battery with thousands of *cells*. I do realize that the colloquial term for "cell" is "battery" (ex: an AA cell is called a battery), but it becomes important to be precise with our words when talking about manufacturing. Small scale Li-ion does a protection-IC per cell (ex: cell phones), mostly because cell phones are so small they only use one cell. Larger scale Li-ion, such as Laptop batteries, may use one-IC per cell, OR one-protection IC for all 3x or 4x cells combined. As long as all the cells are soldered together, one protection IC is cheaper and still usable. At electric-car scales, you have thousands-and-thousands of cells. You can't just manage all of them with one IC, so you build an IC per bundle. Maybe 48 cells or 100-cells per IC or so.
    - mschuster91 5y ago
      Indeed yes I meant cells, I'm not a native English speaker. > At electric-car scales, you have thousands-and-thousands of cells. You can't just manage all of them with one IC, so you build an IC per bundle. Maybe 48 cells or 100-cells per IC or so. Ah okay, I had more expected something on the order of 1 IC per 4 cells to allow individual cell health monitoring.
      - dragontamer 5y ago
        > Indeed yes I meant cells, I'm not a native English speaker. You're doing fine. Native English speakers don't know the difference between cell or battery either. This is more of a precise / technical engineering distinction. * 9V Battery (https://imgur.com/FHJdhIK https://imgur.com/FHJdhIK), a collection of 6x cells. * AAAA Cell (one singular chemical reaction of 1.5V) Notice that the imgur is wrong: they call it a AAAA battery (when the proper term is a AAAA cell). -------- "Battery" is a bunch of objects doing one task. Originally, a "battery" described cannons. Or two rooks (in chess) that work together. Or... 6x 1.5V cells working together to produce a 9V battery.
- buildbot 5y ago
  I know a typical Mercedes has roughly a hundred individual computers, not too far reached to think the average chip count could be 10 or higher per device on the can bus.
  - dpe82 5y ago
    Most of those chips would be standard commodity silicon components (think op-amps and such) as opposed to purpose-built automotive micro controllers.
    - jfim 5y ago
      Are they really? I was under the impression that automotive grade components were at least certified to a wider temperature range than typical other components. JEDEC 94A annex A mentions that the operational temperature range is between -40C to 150C for automotive grade components.
      - bsder 5y ago
        You are correct. Automotive parts are also often certified to higher electrical stress levels as well. This is one of the downstream problems of the shortage: even if you produce the chips, you may not have enough test equipment to qualify and certify them in a timely fashion.
    - tsomctl 5y ago
      Uh, no. There's a ton of dedicated integrated circuits that are highly optimized for one specific task, and which contain everything you need. For example, an ABS module is going to contain something like the L9396, which does signal conditioning for wheel speed sensors, and mosfet drivers for the solenoids. All in one little package configurable by SPI. And even the standard commodity silicon components are going to be AEC-whatever certified, as others have mentioned.
      - dpe82 5y ago
        If there's a ton of dedicated circuits highly optimized for each specific task, then I don't know why there'd be 10+ of them per task as OP claims. :)
- rowanG077 5y ago
  What? You think it's ten thousands to hundred thousand. Hundred thousand seems excessive to me.
- bsder 5y ago
  Maybe on microcontrollers, but the chip shortage is affecting all the "popcorn chips" too. And there are a LOT of those. How many chips per window motor driver? Solenoid locks. ABS systems. Radar. Tire pressure sensors. Temperature sensors. LCD displays. Peril-sensitive rear view mirror. Brake lights. Keyfobs. I can go on and on. The reason why electric cars reduce the bill of materials so much over internal combustion engines is the fact that cars are already rolling computer banks. An electric car just gets rid of those silly parts required to turn plant slime into flame.
mkl 5y ago
I still don't understand how the car industry could have had this effect. How/why did all the different companies in the auto industry coordinate chip ordering/cancelling like that? Or was it a single company that they all order from? Or an unfortunate coincidence?
- 0xcde4c3db 5y ago
  I'm not saying that this is necessarily a correct interpretation of events (simply because I'm not qualified to make such a pronouncement), but I think the parent post tried to explain this by referencing the "bullwhip effect" [1], which is when relatively small changes in demand in one point of the supply chain lead to large systemic changes in resource allocation because the perception of the change is magnified at each upstream supplier. [1] https://sloanreview.mit.edu/wp-content/uploads/1997/04/633ecdb037.pdf https://sloanreview.mit.edu/wp-content/uploads/1997/04/633ec...
- Kliment 5y ago
  They hang out at the same parties. For some reason all the car industry execs were convinced that people would buy dramatically fewer cars in 2020. Because they have a religious aversion to holding any stock they decided to shift the risk over to their suppliers, fucking said suppliers over, as the car industry normally does when they expect demand shifts. The thing that made this particular time special as opposed to business as usual is that the car execs all got it wrong, because people bought way more cars due to pandemic rather than less, due to moving out of cities and avoiding public transit. So they fucked over their suppliers a second time by demanding all those orders back. Now, suppose you're a supplier of some sort of motor driver or power conversion chip (PMIC) in early 2020. You run 200 wafers per month through a fab running some early 2000s process. Half your yearly revenue is a customized part for a particular auto vendor. That vendor calls you up and tells you that they will not be paying you for any parts this year, and you can figure out what to do with them. You can't afford to run your production at half the revenue, so you're screwed. You call up your fab and ask if you can get out of that contract and pay a penalty for doing so, and you reduce your fab order to 100 wafers per month, so you can at least serve your other customers. The fab is annoyed but they put out an announcement that a slot is free, and another vendor making a PMIC for computer motherboards buys it, because they can use the extra capacity and expect increased demand for computers. So far so normal. One vendor screwed, but they'll manage, one fab slightly annoyed that they had to reduce throughput a tiny bit while they find a new buyer. Then a few months later the car manufacturer calls you again and asks for their orders back, and more on top. You tell them to fuck off, because you can no longer manufacture it this year. They tell you they will pay literally anything because their production lines can't run without it because (for religious reasons) they have zero inventory buffers. So what do you do? You call up your fab and they say they can't help you, that slot is already gone. So you ask them to change which mask they use for the wafers you already have reserved, and instead of making your usual non-automotive products, you only make the customized chip for the automotive market. And then, because they screwed you over so badly, and you already lost lots of money and had to lay off staff due to the carmaker, you charge them 6x to 8x the price. All your other customers are now screwed, but you still come out barely ahead. Now, of course the customer not only asked for their old orders back, but more. So you call up all the other customers of the fab you use and ask them if they're willing to trade their fab slots for money. Some do, causing a shortage of whatever they make as well. Repeat this same story for literally every chipmaker that makes anything used by a car. This was the situation in January 2021. Then, several major fabs were destroyed (several in Texas, when the big freeze killed the air pumps keeping the cleanrooms sterile, and the water pipes in the walls of the buildings burst and contaminated other facilities, and one in Japan due to a fire) making the already bad problem worse. So there are several mechanisms that make part availability poor here: 1. The part you want is used in cars. Car manufacturers have locked in the following year or so of production, and "any amount extra you can make in that time" for a multiple of the normal price. Either you can't get the parts at all or you'll be paying a massive premium. 2. The part you want is not used in cars, but is made by someone who makes other parts on the same process that are used in cars. Your part has been deprioritized and will not be manufactured for months. Meanwhile stock runs out and those who hold any stock massively raise prices. 3. The part you want is not used in cars, and the manufacturer doesn't supply the car industry, but uses a process used by someone who does. Car IC suppliers have bought out their fab slots, so the part will not be manufactured for months. 4. The part you want is not used in cars, and doesn't share a process with parts that are. However, it's on the BOM of a popular product that uses such parts, and the manufacturer has seen what the market looks like and is stocking up for months ahead. Distributor inventory is therefore zero and new stock gets snapped up as soon as it shows up because a single missing part means you can't produce your product. and this is how a conference call among car industry exec buddies that have convinced each other that for some reason people will buy fewer cars in a pandemic managed to destroy the entire electronics market for (hopefully no more than) a year or so

ohazi 5y ago

> Fabs love them because they can do process optimization using them, without impacting production customers. I didn't realize that, but it makes a lot of sense. I assumed that they acted more like the downstream manufacturers that I'm used to dealing with, that don't even want to talk to you unless they think you're going to place a huge order.

jankeymeulen 5y ago

Thousands to tens of thousands per car? I think you're off by an order of magnitude.

mschuster91 5y ago
Almost everything in a car has a number of chips. Power regulations, communication buses... and in electric cars with thousands of batteries, at least one chip per battery for protection.
- osamagirl69 5y ago
  This is blatantly false, unless you are confusing battery for an assembled battery pack. In EVs each battery management IC can run somewhere in the range of 4-14 cells in series per chip, and they almost universally run banks of up to 100 cells in parallel. For example, in the tesla model s the pack is comprised into submodules of 76 cells in parallel and 6 of those groups in series per management chip--so only one management chip per 456 cells.
- dragontamer 5y ago
  Electric cars have ONE battery with thousands of *cells*. I do realize that the colloquial term for "cell" is "battery" (ex: an AA cell is called a battery), but it becomes important to be precise with our words when talking about manufacturing. Small scale Li-ion does a protection-IC per cell (ex: cell phones), mostly because cell phones are so small they only use one cell. Larger scale Li-ion, such as Laptop batteries, may use one-IC per cell, OR one-protection IC for all 3x or 4x cells combined. As long as all the cells are soldered together, one protection IC is cheaper and still usable. At electric-car scales, you have thousands-and-thousands of cells. You can't just manage all of them with one IC, so you build an IC per bundle. Maybe 48 cells or 100-cells per IC or so.
  - mschuster91 5y ago
    Indeed yes I meant cells, I'm not a native English speaker. > At electric-car scales, you have thousands-and-thousands of cells. You can't just manage all of them with one IC, so you build an IC per bundle. Maybe 48 cells or 100-cells per IC or so. Ah okay, I had more expected something on the order of 1 IC per 4 cells to allow individual cell health monitoring.
    - dragontamer 5y ago
      > Indeed yes I meant cells, I'm not a native English speaker. You're doing fine. Native English speakers don't know the difference between cell or battery either. This is more of a precise / technical engineering distinction. * 9V Battery (https://imgur.com/FHJdhIK https://imgur.com/FHJdhIK), a collection of 6x cells. * AAAA Cell (one singular chemical reaction of 1.5V) Notice that the imgur is wrong: they call it a AAAA battery (when the proper term is a AAAA cell). -------- "Battery" is a bunch of objects doing one task. Originally, a "battery" described cannons. Or two rooks (in chess) that work together. Or... 6x 1.5V cells working together to produce a 9V battery.
buildbot 5y ago
I know a typical Mercedes has roughly a hundred individual computers, not too far reached to think the average chip count could be 10 or higher per device on the can bus.
- dpe82 5y ago
  Most of those chips would be standard commodity silicon components (think op-amps and such) as opposed to purpose-built automotive micro controllers.
  - jfim 5y ago
    Are they really? I was under the impression that automotive grade components were at least certified to a wider temperature range than typical other components. JEDEC 94A annex A mentions that the operational temperature range is between -40C to 150C for automotive grade components.
    - bsder 5y ago
      You are correct. Automotive parts are also often certified to higher electrical stress levels as well. This is one of the downstream problems of the shortage: even if you produce the chips, you may not have enough test equipment to qualify and certify them in a timely fashion.
  - tsomctl 5y ago
    Uh, no. There's a ton of dedicated integrated circuits that are highly optimized for one specific task, and which contain everything you need. For example, an ABS module is going to contain something like the L9396, which does signal conditioning for wheel speed sensors, and mosfet drivers for the solenoids. All in one little package configurable by SPI. And even the standard commodity silicon components are going to be AEC-whatever certified, as others have mentioned.
    - dpe82 5y ago
      If there's a ton of dedicated circuits highly optimized for each specific task, then I don't know why there'd be 10+ of them per task as OP claims. :)
rowanG077 5y ago
What? You think it's ten thousands to hundred thousand. Hundred thousand seems excessive to me.
bsder 5y ago
Maybe on microcontrollers, but the chip shortage is affecting all the "popcorn chips" too. And there are a LOT of those. How many chips per window motor driver? Solenoid locks. ABS systems. Radar. Tire pressure sensors. Temperature sensors. LCD displays. Peril-sensitive rear view mirror. Brake lights. Keyfobs. I can go on and on. The reason why electric cars reduce the bill of materials so much over internal combustion engines is the fact that cars are already rolling computer banks. An electric car just gets rid of those silly parts required to turn plant slime into flame.

mkl 5y ago

I still don't understand how the car industry could have had this effect. How/why did all the different companies in the auto industry coordinate chip ordering/cancelling like that? Or was it a single company that they all order from? Or an unfortunate coincidence?

0xcde4c3db 5y ago
I'm not saying that this is necessarily a correct interpretation of events (simply because I'm not qualified to make such a pronouncement), but I think the parent post tried to explain this by referencing the "bullwhip effect" [1], which is when relatively small changes in demand in one point of the supply chain lead to large systemic changes in resource allocation because the perception of the change is magnified at each upstream supplier. [1] https://sloanreview.mit.edu/wp-content/uploads/1997/04/633ecdb037.pdf https://sloanreview.mit.edu/wp-content/uploads/1997/04/633ec...
Kliment 5y ago
They hang out at the same parties. For some reason all the car industry execs were convinced that people would buy dramatically fewer cars in 2020. Because they have a religious aversion to holding any stock they decided to shift the risk over to their suppliers, fucking said suppliers over, as the car industry normally does when they expect demand shifts. The thing that made this particular time special as opposed to business as usual is that the car execs all got it wrong, because people bought way more cars due to pandemic rather than less, due to moving out of cities and avoiding public transit. So they fucked over their suppliers a second time by demanding all those orders back. Now, suppose you're a supplier of some sort of motor driver or power conversion chip (PMIC) in early 2020. You run 200 wafers per month through a fab running some early 2000s process. Half your yearly revenue is a customized part for a particular auto vendor. That vendor calls you up and tells you that they will not be paying you for any parts this year, and you can figure out what to do with them. You can't afford to run your production at half the revenue, so you're screwed. You call up your fab and ask if you can get out of that contract and pay a penalty for doing so, and you reduce your fab order to 100 wafers per month, so you can at least serve your other customers. The fab is annoyed but they put out an announcement that a slot is free, and another vendor making a PMIC for computer motherboards buys it, because they can use the extra capacity and expect increased demand for computers. So far so normal. One vendor screwed, but they'll manage, one fab slightly annoyed that they had to reduce throughput a tiny bit while they find a new buyer. Then a few months later the car manufacturer calls you again and asks for their orders back, and more on top. You tell them to fuck off, because you can no longer manufacture it this year. They tell you they will pay literally anything because their production lines can't run without it because (for religious reasons) they have zero inventory buffers. So what do you do? You call up your fab and they say they can't help you, that slot is already gone. So you ask them to change which mask they use for the wafers you already have reserved, and instead of making your usual non-automotive products, you only make the customized chip for the automotive market. And then, because they screwed you over so badly, and you already lost lots of money and had to lay off staff due to the carmaker, you charge them 6x to 8x the price. All your other customers are now screwed, but you still come out barely ahead. Now, of course the customer not only asked for their old orders back, but more. So you call up all the other customers of the fab you use and ask them if they're willing to trade their fab slots for money. Some do, causing a shortage of whatever they make as well. Repeat this same story for literally every chipmaker that makes anything used by a car. This was the situation in January 2021. Then, several major fabs were destroyed (several in Texas, when the big freeze killed the air pumps keeping the cleanrooms sterile, and the water pipes in the walls of the buildings burst and contaminated other facilities, and one in Japan due to a fire) making the already bad problem worse. So there are several mechanisms that make part availability poor here: 1. The part you want is used in cars. Car manufacturers have locked in the following year or so of production, and "any amount extra you can make in that time" for a multiple of the normal price. Either you can't get the parts at all or you'll be paying a massive premium. 2. The part you want is not used in cars, but is made by someone who makes other parts on the same process that are used in cars. Your part has been deprioritized and will not be manufactured for months. Meanwhile stock runs out and those who hold any stock massively raise prices. 3. The part you want is not used in cars, and the manufacturer doesn't supply the car industry, but uses a process used by someone who does. Car IC suppliers have bought out their fab slots, so the part will not be manufactured for months. 4. The part you want is not used in cars, and doesn't share a process with parts that are. However, it's on the BOM of a popular product that uses such parts, and the manufacturer has seen what the market looks like and is stocking up for months ahead. Distributor inventory is therefore zero and new stock gets snapped up as soon as it shows up because a single missing part means you can't produce your product. and this is how a conference call among car industry exec buddies that have convinced each other that for some reason people will buy fewer cars in a pandemic managed to destroy the entire electronics market for (hopefully no more than) a year or so