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It's my understanding from friends in the business that the actual chips do not represent any capacity issue or bottleneck, it's actually manufacturing the devi

It's my understanding from friends in the business that the actual chips do not represent any capacity issue or bottleneck, it's actually manufacturing the devices that the chips are in (e.g. the finished graphics card).

refulgentis 3y ago
That's...fascinating. There's enough space on TSMC but the PCB is the hard part?
- idiotsecant 3y ago
  pcbs are also full of a bunch of other components, many of which are hard to get ahold of right now.
  - davrosthedalek 3y ago
    I think that's it. PCB itself is rather trivial, it's the RAM, but also things like switching regulators (there are others, but then it's a redesign), maybe even stuff like connectors (which don't burn....). For a science project, we need to manufacture magnets. It's not easy to find a company who has the right iron right now, and it's hard to get, with long lead times. The supply crisis is real.
- Yizahi 3y ago
  For example my corpo hit manufacturing issues (production capacity) with flash memory, with clock oscillators, with auxiliary fpga. But main chips production was fine all the time during chip crisis as far as I know. So yeah, small critical components totally can be a blocker. Some specific voltage controller is unavailable and suddenly your whole design is paralyzed.
NotSuspicious 3y ago
Why would this be the case? I would naively think that since the chips can only be made in a fab and the rest can be made basically anywhere that that wouldn't be true.
- archi42 3y ago
  They can not be made "anywhere"; when you can't get that PMIC from the original manufacturer, good luck getting it from someone else. And replacing an IC in a QA tested, EMV verified, FCC and CE etc. certified device will often trigger you redoing all that, possibly requiring additional iterations. If there is a similar part available at all. Take a look at a recent GPU and count the auxiliary components. All of them can cause supply chain difficulties.

refulgentis 3y ago

That's...fascinating. There's enough space on TSMC but the PCB is the hard part?

idiotsecant 3y ago
pcbs are also full of a bunch of other components, many of which are hard to get ahold of right now.
- davrosthedalek 3y ago
  I think that's it. PCB itself is rather trivial, it's the RAM, but also things like switching regulators (there are others, but then it's a redesign), maybe even stuff like connectors (which don't burn....). For a science project, we need to manufacture magnets. It's not easy to find a company who has the right iron right now, and it's hard to get, with long lead times. The supply crisis is real.
Yizahi 3y ago
For example my corpo hit manufacturing issues (production capacity) with flash memory, with clock oscillators, with auxiliary fpga. But main chips production was fine all the time during chip crisis as far as I know. So yeah, small critical components totally can be a blocker. Some specific voltage controller is unavailable and suddenly your whole design is paralyzed.

NotSuspicious 3y ago

Why would this be the case? I would naively think that since the chips can only be made in a fab and the rest can be made basically anywhere that that wouldn't be true.

archi42 3y ago
They can not be made "anywhere"; when you can't get that PMIC from the original manufacturer, good luck getting it from someone else. And replacing an IC in a QA tested, EMV verified, FCC and CE etc. certified device will often trigger you redoing all that, possibly requiring additional iterations. If there is a similar part available at all. Take a look at a recent GPU and count the auxiliary components. All of them can cause supply chain difficulties.