7 ms·

Is the shortage of common components (such as the 10k 0406 resistor you mention) due to: increased demand that can't be met due to unavailable capacity or becau

Is the shortage of common components (such as the 10k 0406 resistor you mention) due to: increased demand that can't be met due to unavailable capacity or because the manufacturers scaled production down during the past year and now there is no capacity to scale it back up? Or because supply chain shortages that feed the fabs (raw materials)?

baybal2 5y ago
Passives are actually quite quick to produce. I think it's a good proof that a few giant distributors in China keep buying, and flushing them down the drain.
- q-big 5y ago
  > Passives are actually quite quick to produce. I think it's a good proof that a few giant distributors in China keep buying, and flushing them down the drain. What are these immense amounts of passives used for?
  - CompuHacker 5y ago
    Everything, but I think they are suggesting that the market for them is being suppressed by hording or destruction of product.
    - azinman2 5y ago
      Wait why would anyone buy up a large percentage of something to only destroy it?
      - the-dude 5y ago
        To hinder competitors? To avoid storage costs?
      - londons_explore 5y ago
        Apple has been known to buy all of the worldwide supply of a component to destroy it, delaying competitors plans.
        lotsofpulp 5y ago
        Source?
        jazzyjackson 5y ago
        I don't think there is one quite so nefarious, the tale I usually hear is that Apple buys out the manufacturing capacity, say, on 8GB ram chips - and then its competitors can't find 8GB chips for their own phones, and have to offer a meager 6GB of RAM instead. (If you think about it, doubling your RAM just so manufacturers don't have the capacity to supply your competitors is pretty ruthless and genius) Googling aroubd I see other stories of Apple buying all available capacity of 5nm manufacturing or glass or sapphire for smartwatch screens etc, here's one source for RAM tho (2009): https://appleinsider.com/articles/09/02/18/apple_buying_up_available_flash_ram_supplies_for_next_iphone https://appleinsider.com/articles/09/02/18/apple_buying_up_a...
        lotsofpulp 5y ago
        Buying something to destroy it so someone else cannot have it is nefarious. Buying something in sufficient quantities that results in others not having it, but still selling out of it is not nefarious.
        microtherion 5y ago
        And it's not like Apple waltzes in and just stuffs all the RAM that's lying around into a shopping cart. One of their uses of their cash reserves is to pre-commit to buying the components they need far in advance. In principle, it seems to me that this shouldn't be causing component shortages — on the contrary, it should reduce planning uncertainty for component manufacturers.
        5y ago
      - tux3 5y ago
        I can answer that in the abstract. I don't think that's what's happening, I don't have any reason to think that. Just answering in a vacuum. Imagine you sell widgets for $200 a pop. Widgets are hard to manufacture, production is limited. Someone else has 10k widgets that they want to sell for $75 per. If you buy all the stock, people will be forced to buy yours, because of supply constraint. 200-75 = 125 is more income than if you price-matched and sold at 75. Now why destroy them, and not just sell them back? Well, they're not necessarily identical to the widgets you make. Maybe they have the other brand's logo stamped on them. Maybe the datasheet doesn't quite match. Either way, your customers might notice. If you just buy and burn, no one downstream of you sees anything, except for higher prices Note also that the above sounds immoral enough to be illegal in a whole lot of countries, so I would advise you not do that, though I'm neither lawyer nor spiritual advisor.
        m3talsmith 5y ago
        In the US, doing the latter is a tax write off and perhaps enough to give you a stimulus.
      - PeterisP 5y ago
        It's crazy for a near-commodity with ample supply, but if there's a supply shortage and (in the short-term) inelastic demand - because it's a relatively cheap thing that's required for a much larger product - then it may easily be economically effective to restrict supply instead of filling it. E.g. if you can make 100k widgets for all of which you have customers at a dollar each, then in a supply shortage with limited alternatives you may find that if you credibly cut supply to 80k widgets, so that some customers will actually be left out, then they might be willing to pay two dollars per widget (so, 160k instead of 100k for that toy example), so you get more money for less goods.
  - aj7 5y ago
    Damping.
phkahler 5y ago
With consolidation, some of the less common component values are being discontinued. I would imagine the same may be happening with standard values in larger sizes and 0406 is kinda big these days. Longer term this shutting out of companies not on the leading edge will result in other changes. Components fabricated integral to the PCB being one such change.
- jiggawatts 5y ago
  > Components fabricated integral to the PCB being one such change. I hadn't heard about this, and it sounds interesting. Do you have any references?
  - phkahler 5y ago
    I only saw it in a presentation from a high end board house. And then only for limited use and probably wide tolerances? But the idea is still in my head and makes some sense. Imagine something like a silk screen laying down passives. No, they didnt say how they do it, that was just my thought.
    - jiggawatts 5y ago
      (Layperson's opinion) I get the impression looking at the electronics industry from the outside over decades, that techniques seem to be moving from "level to level". That is, you now see single silicon chips made like entire clusters of computers, with on-board network connections between surprisingly independent cores and modules. It's almost like a bunch of silicon chips all within one monoilithic silicon circuit board, with no external wiring. Then, several of these chips are in turn mounted on a physical board that is "just" another silicon wafer, possibly made on a very old node size, something still measured in microns. But nonetheless, it's a full silicon chip in its own right, with high-tech chips riding on top of it like circuit elements. And then the motherboards seem to be miniaturising too. I remember when designers hesitated to use chips with much more than 20 pins because it would need to many traces that were too fine. Now? Thousands of pins are the norm for mainstream processors. Soon? Maybe tens of thousands, or even hundreds, and I wouldn't be surprised if circuit components start getting printed directly into the motherboards, like you said you saw. I remember going into a library and picking up an old edition of Scientific American, from the 1960s I think. It had a full-page ad from Texas Instruments advertising their record-setting integration, because they could pack ten (10!) transistors into a single chip. They had an "actual size" picture in the ad, so you could see for yourself and count all ten transistors. The metal layer wires looked thicker than I've seen on some small PCBs these days, which should blow your mind...

baybal2 5y ago

Passives are actually quite quick to produce. I think it's a good proof that a few giant distributors in China keep buying, and flushing them down the drain.

q-big 5y ago
> Passives are actually quite quick to produce. I think it's a good proof that a few giant distributors in China keep buying, and flushing them down the drain. What are these immense amounts of passives used for?
- CompuHacker 5y ago
  Everything, but I think they are suggesting that the market for them is being suppressed by hording or destruction of product.
  - azinman2 5y ago
    Wait why would anyone buy up a large percentage of something to only destroy it?
    - the-dude 5y ago
      To hinder competitors? To avoid storage costs?
    - londons_explore 5y ago
      Apple has been known to buy all of the worldwide supply of a component to destroy it, delaying competitors plans.
      - lotsofpulp 5y ago
        Source?
        jazzyjackson 5y ago
        I don't think there is one quite so nefarious, the tale I usually hear is that Apple buys out the manufacturing capacity, say, on 8GB ram chips - and then its competitors can't find 8GB chips for their own phones, and have to offer a meager 6GB of RAM instead. (If you think about it, doubling your RAM just so manufacturers don't have the capacity to supply your competitors is pretty ruthless and genius) Googling aroubd I see other stories of Apple buying all available capacity of 5nm manufacturing or glass or sapphire for smartwatch screens etc, here's one source for RAM tho (2009): https://appleinsider.com/articles/09/02/18/apple_buying_up_available_flash_ram_supplies_for_next_iphone https://appleinsider.com/articles/09/02/18/apple_buying_up_a...
        lotsofpulp 5y ago
        Buying something to destroy it so someone else cannot have it is nefarious. Buying something in sufficient quantities that results in others not having it, but still selling out of it is not nefarious.
        microtherion 5y ago
        And it's not like Apple waltzes in and just stuffs all the RAM that's lying around into a shopping cart. One of their uses of their cash reserves is to pre-commit to buying the components they need far in advance. In principle, it seems to me that this shouldn't be causing component shortages — on the contrary, it should reduce planning uncertainty for component manufacturers.
        5y ago
    - tux3 5y ago
      I can answer that in the abstract. I don't think that's what's happening, I don't have any reason to think that. Just answering in a vacuum. Imagine you sell widgets for $200 a pop. Widgets are hard to manufacture, production is limited. Someone else has 10k widgets that they want to sell for $75 per. If you buy all the stock, people will be forced to buy yours, because of supply constraint. 200-75 = 125 is more income than if you price-matched and sold at 75. Now why destroy them, and not just sell them back? Well, they're not necessarily identical to the widgets you make. Maybe they have the other brand's logo stamped on them. Maybe the datasheet doesn't quite match. Either way, your customers might notice. If you just buy and burn, no one downstream of you sees anything, except for higher prices Note also that the above sounds immoral enough to be illegal in a whole lot of countries, so I would advise you not do that, though I'm neither lawyer nor spiritual advisor.
      - m3talsmith 5y ago
        In the US, doing the latter is a tax write off and perhaps enough to give you a stimulus.
    - PeterisP 5y ago
      It's crazy for a near-commodity with ample supply, but if there's a supply shortage and (in the short-term) inelastic demand - because it's a relatively cheap thing that's required for a much larger product - then it may easily be economically effective to restrict supply instead of filling it. E.g. if you can make 100k widgets for all of which you have customers at a dollar each, then in a supply shortage with limited alternatives you may find that if you credibly cut supply to 80k widgets, so that some customers will actually be left out, then they might be willing to pay two dollars per widget (so, 160k instead of 100k for that toy example), so you get more money for less goods.
- aj7 5y ago
  Damping.

phkahler 5y ago

With consolidation, some of the less common component values are being discontinued. I would imagine the same may be happening with standard values in larger sizes and 0406 is kinda big these days. Longer term this shutting out of companies not on the leading edge will result in other changes. Components fabricated integral to the PCB being one such change.

jiggawatts 5y ago
> Components fabricated integral to the PCB being one such change. I hadn't heard about this, and it sounds interesting. Do you have any references?
- phkahler 5y ago
  I only saw it in a presentation from a high end board house. And then only for limited use and probably wide tolerances? But the idea is still in my head and makes some sense. Imagine something like a silk screen laying down passives. No, they didnt say how they do it, that was just my thought.
  - jiggawatts 5y ago
    (Layperson's opinion) I get the impression looking at the electronics industry from the outside over decades, that techniques seem to be moving from "level to level". That is, you now see single silicon chips made like entire clusters of computers, with on-board network connections between surprisingly independent cores and modules. It's almost like a bunch of silicon chips all within one monoilithic silicon circuit board, with no external wiring. Then, several of these chips are in turn mounted on a physical board that is "just" another silicon wafer, possibly made on a very old node size, something still measured in microns. But nonetheless, it's a full silicon chip in its own right, with high-tech chips riding on top of it like circuit elements. And then the motherboards seem to be miniaturising too. I remember when designers hesitated to use chips with much more than 20 pins because it would need to many traces that were too fine. Now? Thousands of pins are the norm for mainstream processors. Soon? Maybe tens of thousands, or even hundreds, and I wouldn't be surprised if circuit components start getting printed directly into the motherboards, like you said you saw. I remember going into a library and picking up an old edition of Scientific American, from the 1960s I think. It had a full-page ad from Texas Instruments advertising their record-setting integration, because they could pack ten (10!) transistors into a single chip. They had an "actual size" picture in the ad, so you could see for yourself and count all ten transistors. The metal layer wires looked thicker than I've seen on some small PCBs these days, which should blow your mind...