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What are these chips and what is preventing us from scaling up capacity? I’m not challenging that it’s difficult, but the reporting seems shoddy. Maybe I’m the
by throwaway894345 5y ago
What are these chips and what is preventing us from scaling up capacity? I’m not challenging that it’s difficult, but the reporting seems shoddy. Maybe I’m the only one who wants to understand this stuff, but these kinds of questions always seem obvious to me (same with COVID vaccine manufacturing).
- acdha 5y agoHere’s a good rundown: it ultimately all comes back to chip fabs being huge operations with massive upfront costs which makes them sensitive to both the pandemic’s direct effects and secondary problems like the way the auto manufacturers slashed orders in 2020, forcing the chip manufacturers to sign other contracts to avoid idling that much capacity[1], and unrelated problems happening at the same time like cryptocurrency pulling capacity away from useful applications. https://www.eetimes.com/the-chips-are-down-with-no-relief-in-sight/ https://www.eetimes.com/the-chips-are-down-with-no-relief-in... 1. I’m not sure how much of this has been independently verified but this commenter blames the auto manufacturers heavily: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26931498 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26931498
- throwaway894345 5y agoThat's a really good HN comment, thanks for sharing!