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Your reply looks carefully written but "is there any truth to that statement?" "Yes." confuses me. Maybe the parent's question is not well formed. Would the bes
by code_biologist 5y ago
Your reply looks carefully written but "is there any truth to that statement?" "Yes." confuses me. Maybe the parent's question is not well formed. Would the best direct answer be?
I have met so many people that think their semiconductor manufacturing needs are exempt from the supply chain issue or backlog. [because they are not on a leading node]
Their semiconductor manufacturing needs are not exempt from the supply chain issue or backlog. [for the reasons you explained]
- nwiswell 5y agoI meant "Yes, there is truth to the statement" in the sense that some market participants are "exempt from", or more accurately "not constrained by", supply chain issues or backlog problems because their specific process nodes are not capacity impacted, and the fungibility problem acts to ensure it stays that way. I actually did not mean to say that leading nodes are the only ones impacted; that's not the case. The landscape can be surprising at a glance because there's no obvious rhyme or reason to who and what is capacity impacted. Before fabs get greenlit for construction, the beancounters do demand forecasts many years out into the future (getting the first chips out of a fab is a labor of many years). If those forecasts were high, there is overcapacity and prices will settle relatively low for that node. If they were low, then there will be capacity issues. Over time, trailing nodes will get "arbitraged" because chip designers for new devices that are cost-sensitive or not performance-critical will preferentially select cheaper nodes, but acute changes in demand like we've seen from COVID can still cause problems.