4 ms·

Even if by magic we had all of the worlds fabs moved exclusively to the US and working at 100% capacity... we'd still need the rest of the infrastructure to act

Even if by magic we had all of the worlds fabs moved exclusively to the US and working at 100% capacity... we'd still need the rest of the infrastructure to actually make them useful, plastics and ceramics for packaging, discrete components, solder, connectors, pcb boards, assembly, etc... the Fab lines are only a tiny part of the big picture. Who in the US makes surface mount resistors, capacitors, inductors, etc. in volume sufficient to meet all of our demand? (I'd love to be proved wrong here)

minetest2048 2y ago
> Who in the US makes surface mount resistors, capacitors, inductors Adding to this point, don't underestimate passive components! For some applications, such as RF, you can't just change inductors with another inductor that have the same inductance value. Because they will have different parasitic capacitance and resistance, which will affect RF performance. Passive components are surprisingly involved, they even have their own news site: https://passive-components.eu/ https://passive-components.eu/ EDIT: Its not just RF, capacitor selection matters for power converters too. Do you know that multilayer ceramic capacitors (MLCC) can lose 70% of their rated capacitance at high DC bias voltage? This is what happened if someone doesn't realize that: https://www.reddit.com/r/embedded/comments/1cs2c5l/todays_reminder_that_mlccs_lose_capacitance_with/ https://www.reddit.com/r/embedded/comments/1cs2c5l/todays_re... If I specced an inductor or MLCCs, I can't just change it. This means if any country wants to have electronics supply chain in house, they need to bring all of the passive components back, or they can't manufacture things. Electronics is not just 5nm chips, those chips that always in the news need support components
- sevensor 2y ago
  Adding to your addition, let’s not forget the “raw” materials, which are a constant headache to keep supplied and qualified. Consider a not entirely hypothetical example where your regular supplier of sulfuric acid is late. Your iso tank runs out and you have to tap a drum. The drum is from a qualified source, but it’s been sitting around for a while. The drum may have started degrading; is the sulfuric still pure enough to use? If it’s not, you have to idle your billion dollar fab until you can source another iso. Anyway, multiply this headache by nitric acid, hydrofluoric, bare wafers, several kinds of photoresist, arsine, phosphene, diborane, silane, cmp slurry, and dozens of other ingredients, plus oem spares for ten thousand different consumables for your equipment. Supply chain for semiconductors is no joke.
  - reaperman 2y ago
    Supply chain for liquid and gas materials in the USA is quite robust. The western hemisphere's largest industrial complex (the Gulf Coast refining industry) can or does supply plenty of anything you can think of - including everything you mentioned at whatever purity you can imagine. But cost is much higher than in China, and things like "bare wafers" are not included in that petrochemical output.
    - sevensor 2y ago
      > everything you mentioned at whatever purity you can imagine. Are you familiar with the trace metals requirements of semiconductor processing? And the volume of an iso tank? And the volatility of the petrochemical refining industry? I wouldn’t write off the difficulty of maintaining qualified suppliers quite so cavalierly.
generuso 2y ago
Vishay is one of the large manufacturers of discrete semiconductors and passive electronic components. They maintain a significant manufacturing presence in the USA, with about a dozen of factories. The legendary ATC (American Technical Ceramics), belongs to AVX which belongs to Kyocera. It also apparently manufactures all their high frequency capacitors in the USA. So if we look at US manufacturing proper, it exists, though compared to the greater China, it is of course quite small, as one would expect, considering where most of the electronic assembly happens. However, if we look at the component manufacturing which is "not in China", then the situation is fine, with the dominant companies having hundreds of factories in Japan. Specifically, lots and lots of ceramic-based components (capacitors, resistors, filters, magnetics, etc) are manufactured in Japan (Murata, Kyocera, TDK) and to some extent by their subsidiaries in the USA and elsewhere. If we include Mexico, Eastern Europe, Israel, Philippines, a few factories in Western Europe, then the situation is quite balanced. Here is an interesting article regarding capacitors: "Japanese companies hold a dominant market share of 56%, significantly ahead, while mainland Chinese MLCC manufacturers account for approximately 7% of the global total." https://www.cytechsystems.com/news/top-mlcc-manufacturers https://www.cytechsystems.com/news/top-mlcc-manufacturers

minetest2048 2y ago

> Who in the US makes surface mount resistors, capacitors, inductors Adding to this point, don't underestimate passive components! For some applications, such as RF, you can't just change inductors with another inductor that have the same inductance value. Because they will have different parasitic capacitance and resistance, which will affect RF performance. Passive components are surprisingly involved, they even have their own news site: https://passive-components.eu/ https://passive-components.eu/ EDIT: Its not just RF, capacitor selection matters for power converters too. Do you know that multilayer ceramic capacitors (MLCC) can lose 70% of their rated capacitance at high DC bias voltage? This is what happened if someone doesn't realize that: https://www.reddit.com/r/embedded/comments/1cs2c5l/todays_reminder_that_mlccs_lose_capacitance_with/ https://www.reddit.com/r/embedded/comments/1cs2c5l/todays_re... If I specced an inductor or MLCCs, I can't just change it. This means if any country wants to have electronics supply chain in house, they need to bring all of the passive components back, or they can't manufacture things. Electronics is not just 5nm chips, those chips that always in the news need support components

sevensor 2y ago
Adding to your addition, let’s not forget the “raw” materials, which are a constant headache to keep supplied and qualified. Consider a not entirely hypothetical example where your regular supplier of sulfuric acid is late. Your iso tank runs out and you have to tap a drum. The drum is from a qualified source, but it’s been sitting around for a while. The drum may have started degrading; is the sulfuric still pure enough to use? If it’s not, you have to idle your billion dollar fab until you can source another iso. Anyway, multiply this headache by nitric acid, hydrofluoric, bare wafers, several kinds of photoresist, arsine, phosphene, diborane, silane, cmp slurry, and dozens of other ingredients, plus oem spares for ten thousand different consumables for your equipment. Supply chain for semiconductors is no joke.
- reaperman 2y ago
  Supply chain for liquid and gas materials in the USA is quite robust. The western hemisphere's largest industrial complex (the Gulf Coast refining industry) can or does supply plenty of anything you can think of - including everything you mentioned at whatever purity you can imagine. But cost is much higher than in China, and things like "bare wafers" are not included in that petrochemical output.
  - sevensor 2y ago
    > everything you mentioned at whatever purity you can imagine. Are you familiar with the trace metals requirements of semiconductor processing? And the volume of an iso tank? And the volatility of the petrochemical refining industry? I wouldn’t write off the difficulty of maintaining qualified suppliers quite so cavalierly.

generuso 2y ago

Vishay is one of the large manufacturers of discrete semiconductors and passive electronic components. They maintain a significant manufacturing presence in the USA, with about a dozen of factories. The legendary ATC (American Technical Ceramics), belongs to AVX which belongs to Kyocera. It also apparently manufactures all their high frequency capacitors in the USA. So if we look at US manufacturing proper, it exists, though compared to the greater China, it is of course quite small, as one would expect, considering where most of the electronic assembly happens. However, if we look at the component manufacturing which is "not in China", then the situation is fine, with the dominant companies having hundreds of factories in Japan. Specifically, lots and lots of ceramic-based components (capacitors, resistors, filters, magnetics, etc) are manufactured in Japan (Murata, Kyocera, TDK) and to some extent by their subsidiaries in the USA and elsewhere. If we include Mexico, Eastern Europe, Israel, Philippines, a few factories in Western Europe, then the situation is quite balanced. Here is an interesting article regarding capacitors: "Japanese companies hold a dominant market share of 56%, significantly ahead, while mainland Chinese MLCC manufacturers account for approximately 7% of the global total." https://www.cytechsystems.com/news/top-mlcc-manufacturers https://www.cytechsystems.com/news/top-mlcc-manufacturers