5 ms·

True, and then every variant in every package version. But it does cause problems in the current climate as each of those variants do have to make it through t

by janekm 5y ago

True, and then every variant in every package version. But it does cause problems in the current climate as each of those variants do have to make it through the production pipeline (after die fab) which is also constrained at the moment. And of course ST is prioritising "high value customers" (like car manufacturers).

thrtythreeforty 5y ago
Oh for sure, it's not like fab capacity is the only bottleneck at this point. Seems like everything is the bottleneck.
baybal2 5y ago
Car companies are just few percents of MCU market. A car may have a lot of MCUs, but that's probably less than 30 per economy car. The entire car industry is a drop in the ocean for The Big Semi. On other hand, I've seen very expensive STM32s being used in near semi-disposable goods. Car companies are doomed because they required special "automotive grade" MCUs, which are usually just very long running die series with a lot of testing. Being on old die users, they can't share the benefit of much larger mainstream MCU die batches. They are now in the end of the queue waiting for big batches of dies for mainstream MCUs to finish manufacturing. IMHO, lots of auto parts uses automotive grade MCUs without any particular necessity. It's just because they were well moneyed, and they can. Some Mercedes car literally have one MCU per button, which just sits on CAN bus, and blinks an LED.
- mastax 5y ago
  > On other hand, I've seen very expensive STM32s being used in near semi-disposable goods. Like a single-use disposable electronic COVID test: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvArprBmdFA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvArprBmdFA (though this one uses an nRF52)
varjag 5y ago
Contrary to the popular opinion (which can be traced back to one or two newspaper articles), it's not the car companies causing this. All sorts of material has evaporated from markets, in grades beyond automotive.

by janekm 5y ago

thrtythreeforty 5y ago

Oh for sure, it's not like fab capacity is the only bottleneck at this point. Seems like everything is the bottleneck.

baybal2 5y ago

Car companies are just few percents of MCU market. A car may have a lot of MCUs, but that's probably less than 30 per economy car. The entire car industry is a drop in the ocean for The Big Semi. On other hand, I've seen very expensive STM32s being used in near semi-disposable goods. Car companies are doomed because they required special "automotive grade" MCUs, which are usually just very long running die series with a lot of testing. Being on old die users, they can't share the benefit of much larger mainstream MCU die batches. They are now in the end of the queue waiting for big batches of dies for mainstream MCUs to finish manufacturing. IMHO, lots of auto parts uses automotive grade MCUs without any particular necessity. It's just because they were well moneyed, and they can. Some Mercedes car literally have one MCU per button, which just sits on CAN bus, and blinks an LED.

mastax 5y ago
> On other hand, I've seen very expensive STM32s being used in near semi-disposable goods. Like a single-use disposable electronic COVID test: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvArprBmdFA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvArprBmdFA (though this one uses an nRF52)

varjag 5y ago

Contrary to the popular opinion (which can be traced back to one or two newspaper articles), it's not the car companies causing this. All sorts of material has evaporated from markets, in grades beyond automotive.