Analog/Linear EOL wave incoming?

[rssd]

Being hit from behind multiple times over the last few weeks by EOL notifications from Analog about LT(C) parts. This is so annoying. The same thing happened with Atmel/Microchip, where just a few weeks ago we ended one of our major transitions. And now it comes again.

Especially for parts with A LOT of time invested in making them work the way you want them to, or even worse for those with no known alternative existing.

Why?? Just why?

[SiliconWizard]

They are "rationalizing their offering".

[tszaboo]

Probably because they realized that they cannot sell buck converters/opamps for the same price as the target price of your entire BOM.
The parts are good, the price is bad. And instead of lowering it and selling 100 times more, they do like Zara and "burn the clothes".

[floobydust]

It's the usual consequences of the MBA playbook. Acquire companies for the illusion of growth. Then decimate and outsource everything, jack up prices and reap rewards for stockholders.

Analog Devices closed LTC's Hillview plant, laid off the staff, sell the plant/land. Then outsourced the fab and packaging to Asia. All the ref IC's. A terrible loss for quality, stock, flexibility and 100 other reasons.

This in a time when the Biden administration is fumbling around to on-shore semi fab, second round of subsidies.   
They should actually penalize some American semiconductor companies like ADI for doing this shit. Instead of lying that it's about "redundancies" and then spending $100's millions investing offshore. 

I also note ADI jacked up the prices on LTC parts. Nobody I know, including me designs that stuff into production now because of the prices. LT317 USD $4.81 in 100-lot as a primitive example. Hahaha.
What was the fucking point of the acquisition? Oh yeah max. profit and nothing else, screw American tech and manufacturing.

Vanguard International Semiconductor, Taiwan subsidiary of TSMC is now doing the fab. Philippines or Singapore for packaging.
We can discuss Maxim as well, they also got the MBA treatment.

[David Hess]

I also note ADI jacked up the prices on LTC parts. Nobody I know, including me designs that stuff into production now because of the prices. LT317 USD $4.81 in 100-lot as a primitive example. Hahaha.

So it was not my imagination that everything from ADI seemed to cost twice as much since the last time I looked.

[Kleinstein]

The shortage 2 years ago is a good excuse to increase the prizes and with less competition this is also easier.

It is no surprize that quite some parts go EOL. There are just a lot of similar parts from the old ADI, LTC and Maxim. In most cases there should be direct replacements from ADI, though maybe at a higher pirce.
Closing down a facility can also come with a few parts no longer available even if there is no direct alternative.

[David Hess]

Luckily Texas Instruments has better precision parts now at less cost, at least if their datasheets can be believed.

[floobydust]

Semiconductor pricing is pretty high, to me it looks like a bubble or a consequence of the Two Giants.
They've obsoleted many products and packages, BOM costs are really stressful now.  I can't justify $15 for that op-amp and neither can you ADI lol.
Add in the mess created by TI and ADI in their portfolios after these acquisitions, as well as the approach to outsourcing everything and Wall Street's greed mantra...
Nothing is stable - spec'ing a part, then wiped by the EOL wave.
Parts out of Asia are priced as expected, so it's really ADI profiteering that we are seeing.

I felt sad reading the PCN about the LTZ1000, LTFLU/SZA263, 399 etc. all being outsourced and LTC layoffs and fab/plant closure- all in the name of generating max. profit as quickly as possible. They were a legendary company, National Semiconductor as well. Fluke will also have problems, as their ASIC's were by LT. Goodbye  :'(

Will ADI put out top quality in their ADR1000, ADR1001 by outsourcing? We all know how that's going to go.

[SiliconWizard]

Yes, I noted that for FPGAs, but it's really a general issue with semiconductors, prices have literally exploded, sometimes close to twice the price they were a couple years ago. We're not talking about just a few %, but 100% or more.

Yes, LT parts in particular, they've always been pretty pricy (but good) before ADI's acquisition, but this is getting out of control.

[tszaboo]

Yes, I noted that for FPGAs, but it's really a general issue with semiconductors, prices have literally exploded, sometimes close to twice the price they were a couple years ago. We're not talking about just a few %, but 100% or more.

Yes, LT parts in particular, they've always been pretty pricy (but good) before ADI's acquisition, but this is getting out of control.

They have, but we are getting alternatives made in China more and more by the day. There are buck converters for 2 cents, motor drivers for 10 cents, microcontrollers that are 15 cents, and 24 bit ADCs for 20 cents. The same parts are also cheaper there. There has to be a wake-up call for the industry here, because we are not going to be competitive on the long run with their pricing.

[tom66]

I remember when I worked for EchoStar and we had set top boxes.  We started with TI parts for the DC-DC converters, but they jacked their prices up so we moved to Richtek who made pin-compatible equivalents for all of the buck converters we used.  I recall the BOM for one STB went down by $10.   Compete or die.

[Cicada]

I think greed is going to kill the west.

Same goes for Altium. Seems like they are on the wrong track.

[tooki]

I think greed is going to kill the west.

Same goes for Altium. Seems like they are on the wrong track.

How is greed even slightly a characteristically “western” value?!? Greed is all over the place. It varies by country/culture, but one certainly cannot claim that a particular hemisphere has a particular attraction to it.

[coppercone2]

the economists are saying people are pissed and inflation is ending because people stopped buying inflated prices, Americans are going frugal.

And if your boss decided to have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for breakfast, you better believe your BOM target is going to get slashed for production projects.

[David Hess]

the economists are saying people are pissed and inflation is ending because people stopped buying inflated prices, Americans are going frugal.

Americans are going frugal because they ran out of credit.

[Marco]

The new western mantra is "we'll make it up in pricing".

[floobydust]

the economists are saying people are pissed and inflation is ending because people stopped buying inflated prices, Americans are going frugal.

And if your boss decided to have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for breakfast, you better believe your BOM target is going to get slashed for production projects.

Lately I could care less about the BOM targets because I am not rewarded for meeting or exceeding them. Paycheque stays the same, and below inflation for some time now.
It takes many hours shopping for best component pricing, and when will Purchasing do their work instead of playing dumb?

ADI CEO has no technical background, just sales. Not as bad as Boeing's CEO with his accounting degree lol. So we know how this all ends...
AD797 is over CAD $30 now, for an op-amp FFS.

[David Hess]

AD797 is over CAD $30 now, for an op-amp FFS.

And since they bought Linear Technology, those parts have inflated prices as well.

I have actually started using Texas Instruments parts again.

[magic]

I wonder if you are just paying vintage tax on this part, like with OPA627.

ADA4898 appears to be a cheaper successor with similar characteristics (but no offset nulling, decompensation and distortion cancellation).

[floobydust]

It's a recurring MBA story - borrow money because money is cheap, acquire companies and brand names, appear to grow and be bigger, satisfy Wall Street, reach EPS targets. Blah blah blah.
ADI almost doubled their debt in the past year and long-term debt is now $6.6B
The cost of servicing that debt adds a huge burden.

Problem is all the "success" is only fueled by price increases. LT1028 (SOIC-8) is CAD $25, LT1115 (SOIC-16) is CAD $21, LT317 $13 FFS.
ADI I would say has out-priced themselves, literally 1.75x what they used to be. Very difficult to make a cost competitive product using their parts.
LT is now just an acquired brand name, the fab is outsourced to Asia now. I fully expect the quality to plummet, ref. IC's included. It's a boutique brand being mismanaged to death. I still grieve the loss of the LT Field Engineers, superior datasheets, app notes and now the ripoff prices as a final hit.
In the boardroom, "yeah let's acquire that brand and outsource while we double the price!". Caveman mentality at the helm.

Ultimately the company will someday have to compete with Asian manufacturers who have a keep it simple, keep it dirt cheap approach.

[peter-h]

Maxim became a really shit company years ago when its Irish head office stopped communicating like normal people do and forced everybody to raise "support tickets" on their website, for quotes, etc. I had a direct account with them but hardly use their parts now. Just the MAX3089. I hoped ADI will stick a broom in there but they didn't.

Linear Tech relied for decades on incompetent fresh designers selecting high spec chips where much cheaper generic ones would do. This is changing now. How many op-amps are there? Must be thousands.

TI is pretty good, and ST do a load of analog parts which are little known and remained available during covid. I replaced a lot of Maxim parts with ST, and with Renesas who do a load of even less well known parts.

[tszaboo]

It's a recurring MBA story - borrow money because money is cheap, acquire companies and brand names, appear to grow and be bigger, satisfy Wall Street, reach EPS targets. Blah blah blah.
ADI almost doubled their debt in the past year and long-term debt is now $6.6B
The cost of servicing that debt adds a huge burden.

Problem is all the "success" is only fueled by price increases. LT1028 (SOIC-8) is CAD $25, LT1115 (SOIC-16) is CAD $21, LT317 $13 FFS.
ADI I would say has out-priced themselves, literally 1.75x what they used to be. Very difficult to make a cost competitive product using their parts.
LT is now just an acquired brand name, the fab is outsourced to Asia now. I fully expect the quality to plummet, ref. IC's included. It's a boutique brand being mismanaged to death. I still grieve the loss of the LT Field Engineers, superior datasheets, app notes and now the ripoff prices as a final hit.
In the boardroom, "yeah let's acquire that brand and outsource while we double the price!". Caveman mentality at the helm.

Ultimately the company will someday have to compete with Asian manufacturers who have a keep it simple, keep it dirt cheap approach.

Linear was using Value based pricing since forever, where they set the price of the product to whatever they though was worth. And it has nothing to do with their actual cost price of the IC.
Meanwhile a lot of Chinese semiconductor supplier seems to be using the cost plus model. Where they calculate how much it costs them to make something, add some margin, and sell it on that price.
Even suppliers are using it. I think that's why you can buy ICs for 5 cents at LCSC. It's unthinkable to have the same at Digikey/Farnell, as they are trying to maximize profit in a different way, and they know someone with a prototype will not care, and someone with a production quantity will bypass them anyway.

There is a large hole for manufacturers trying to make 100-10K assemblies. Because manufacturers are not willing to talk to you about pricing, and that puts you at a large disadvantage, because your product might not be cost competitive.
At least that's my 2 cents. 

[peter-h]

Farnell, Mouser, Digikey etc price for the 100-1k market. Nobody uses them for production of 1k+ because practically any disti can beat them, often by 2x or even 3x.

Linear and ADI were selling for what they could get, since for ever.

[David Hess]

Maxim became a really shit company years ago when its Irish head office stopped communicating like normal people do and forced everybody to raise "support tickets" on their website, for quotes, etc. I had a direct account with them but hardly use their parts now. Just the MAX3089. I hoped ADI will stick a broom in there but they didn't.

I never had good experienced with Maxim, but they were very good for getting free samples.

[tggzzz]

Maxim became a really shit company years ago when its Irish head office stopped communicating like normal people do and forced everybody to raise "support tickets" on their website, for quotes, etc. I had a direct account with them but hardly use their parts now. Just the MAX3089. I hoped ADI will stick a broom in there but they didn't.

I never had good experienced with Maxim, but they were very good for getting free samples.

On s.e.d there was a saying: "friends don't let friends use Maxim".

My experience was (very) limited to looking at one current interesting device, only to find there was zero availability. There were several plausible explanations, none of which reflected well on Maxim.

I couldn't work out whether to trust Maxim, or not.