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The chip shortage is interesting to me. In that it seems to be mostly driven by bad forecasting both by clients and the foundries. But the foundries seem to ge
by tyingq 5y ago
The chip shortage is interesting to me. In that it seems to be mostly driven by bad forecasting both by clients and the foundries. But the foundries seem to get nothing but upside out of it. Perhaps it swings next time and there's excess capacity.
- f6v 5y agoI wonder if food shortages are possible for the same reasons.
- tonyedgecombe 5y agoFood availability is driven by weather as much as anything. The North American wheat harvest has been poor this year so the price of wheat is rising around the world.
- Geee 5y agoAbsolutely. If there's a fear of shortage, shortages will happen. There are also chain reactions to whole economy.
- tbihl 5y agoNo. If there's fear of a shortage and prices don't rise adequately in response, then shortages happen.
- kzrdude 5y agoI've heard the industry is full of exaggerated orders now to, everyone ordering more than they need, to see what they can get. Not a great way to have efficient trade.
- tyingq 5y agoI wonder if TSMC made a trip out to OPEC to talk about history :)
- asdfasgasdgasdg 5y agoThere are some reports of collapsing lumber prices, when everyone was talking about the sky falling and prices skyrocketing two months ago. https://financialpost.com/commodities/lumber-prices-collapse-forces-sawmill-production-curb https://financialpost.com/commodities/lumber-prices-collapse... So your idea that semiconductor prices might fall a lot in the future seems reasonable.
- vbezhenar 5y agoI think that lumber storage is much more expensive compared to chips
- tyingq 5y agoDo you mean storing already made chips? I imagine that's (often) expensive from a depreciation perspective.
- vbezhenar 5y agoCheap microcontrollers are not deprecated for a very long time. STM sells chips designed 10 years ago, AFAIK.
- tyingq 5y agoAgreed, though I suspect the retail price still drops as other, newer, chips enter the market.
- magicalhippo 5y agoIndeed. They even have some they guarantee to make for at least 20 years. https://www.st.com/content/st_com/en/about/quality-and-reliability/product-longevity.html#10-year-longevity https://www.st.com/content/st_com/en/about/quality-and-relia...
- pcurve 5y agoYes, and they're stuck in a bad place. new fab takes years and costs 10 billion + to build... https://www.extremetech.com/computing/322695-why-we-cant-build-our-way-out-of-the-semiconductor-shortage https://www.extremetech.com/computing/322695-why-we-cant-bui...
- AnimalMuppet 5y agoIt will swing. It always swings. This isn't the first time this has happened. People see these nice, tasty prices, and bring more capacity online. That takes time measured in quarters to years, but when it comes online, there are suddenly a lot more chips. Prices fall, but nobody will reduce output, because they have to pay for all this new capacity they just built. It will come. It's going to be a rough year or two, though.