How is Chipageddon affecting you?

[jrs45]

Nothing to do with shortages, fake chips have been a thing for many years.
All those opamps, DS18B20, FT232 and other popular "hobbyist" chips you get from auction sites are fake. What cannot be faked is recycled.

I wonder what those odd reasons could be

Well yeah, but with the shortages, people are much more willing to take a chance on a nonauthorized distributor, so the market for fake parts is exploding.  A real shame.

[Zoli]

"Russia could hit U.S. chip industry, White House warns"
"... regarding Russian/Ukrainian production of a number of semiconductor materials... referencing a summary by Techcet on C₄F₆ {Hexafluorobutadiene} Palladium, Helium, Neon and Scandium...
"According to Techcet estimates, over 90% of U.S. semiconductor-grade neon supplies come from Ukraine, while 35% of U.S. palladium is sourced from Russia."

It's amazing how complex the semiconductor supply chain is. I hope this doesn't get ugly but with the White House issuing fresh warnings, they're assuming it is.

" Mother, should I trust the government ? "

Pink Floyd, The Wall, 1979

And Roger Waters's answer on  the "The Wall" tour:
"No fu(king way"

[coppice]

" Mother, should I trust the government ? "
Pink Floyd, The Wall, 1979

You should trust them as much as you trust big pharma. Last year that was apparently not at all, but this year they are our friends.

[daqq]

Nothing to do with shortages, fake chips have been a thing for many years.
All those opamps, DS18B20, FT232 and other popular "hobbyist" chips you get from auction sites are fake. What cannot be faked is recycled.

I wonder what those odd reasons could be

Well yeah, but with the shortages, people are much more willing to take a chance on a nonauthorized distributor, so the market for fake parts is exploding.  A real shame.

The weird market is not only exploding, it's doing better than the authorized distributors, since the bastards bought all of the supplies for various chips and are now selling them at insane prices. A chip that normally costs ~5 USD is now being offered for ~120 USD by certain vendors, who seem to have incredible amounts of it and it was certainly not bought out by them in order to screw everyone over, further amplifying the ongoing shitstorm. I do hope that they get eaten by rabid gerbils or some such.

[Ed.Kloonk]

"Russia could hit U.S. chip industry, White House warns"
"... regarding Russian/Ukrainian production of a number of semiconductor materials... referencing a summary by Techcet on C₄F₆ {Hexafluorobutadiene} Palladium, Helium, Neon and Scandium...
"According to Techcet estimates, over 90% of U.S. semiconductor-grade neon supplies come from Ukraine, while 35% of U.S. palladium is sourced from Russia."

It's amazing how complex the semiconductor supply chain is. I hope this doesn't get ugly but with the White House issuing fresh warnings, they're assuming it is.

" Mother, should I trust the government ? "

Pink Floyd, The Wall, 1979

And Roger Waters's answer on  the "The Wall" tour:
"No fu(king way"

Roger Waters used to think the world was flat.   

[strawberry]

mouser could be outsourcing ?? : marking JCC1845F ,should be C1845F
TO-92 is a bit different as well

[Sal Ammoniac]

Finally found a hard-to-get STM32 board in stock at a distributor after waiting months. Shipped on Friday, and was expecting delivery today, but UPS promptly lost the package. The bastards…

[Marco]

The weird market is not only exploding, it's doing better than the authorized distributors, since the bastards bought all of the supplies for various chips and are now selling them at insane prices. A chip that normally costs ~5 USD is now being offered for ~120 USD by certain vendors, who seem to have incredible amounts of it and it was certainly not bought out by them in order to screw everyone over, further amplifying the ongoing shitstorm. I do hope that they get eaten by rabid gerbils or some such.

It's a shame anti-hoarding laws were only used for toilet paper and masks.

In a supply crisis the efficient market hypothesis is bull. Rationing is the economically optimal way to assign supply, not driving everyone without the size to deal directly with manufacturers (who are rationing among their customers) or very deep pockets out of business.

[IDEngineer]

It's a shame anti-hoarding laws were only used for toilet paper and masks. In a supply crisis the efficient market hypothesis is bull. Rationing is the economically optimal way to assign supply, not driving everyone without the size to deal directly with manufacturers (who are rationing among their customers) or very deep pockets out of business.

Because centrally planned economies have historically done so well?

Rationing just means your future is decided by bureaucrats who are still, as you corrected noted above, controlled by "very deep pockets". And those bureaucrats generally have little technical knowledge about the industry. Imagine your typical career politician being in charge of deciding who gets this week's allotment of microcontrollers.

I don't have a good answer to the problem, but I'm positive this isn't it.

[Marco]

Because centrally planned economies have historically done so well?

It's how every winning side has won a major war.

Anti-hoarding measures usually just limit the amount of margin suppliers can charge and stocking. Since the prices hoarders charge have no impact on the prices the manufacturers can charge it will not distort market mechanisms.

[SilverSolder]

Because centrally planned economies have historically done so well?

It's how every winning side has won a major war.

Anti-hoarding measures usually just limit the amount of margin suppliers can charge and stocking. Since the prices hoarders charge have no impact on the prices the manufacturers can charge it will not distort market mechanisms.

Are we sure that the problem is hoarding, rather than product being unavailable from the manufacturers?

After all, the manufacturer has a great incentive to sell into the market when demand (price) is up.

[Marco]

The problem isn't hoarding, but hoarding doesn't help.

[HwAoRrDk]

The situation with non-official sellers is also out of hand. For some odd reason, they grind off the markings and re-laser them. On some chips, the grinding is not deep enough and the old markings shine through. Just the date code is different.

I bet the remarking genuine chips with newer dates is to do with MSL ratings. Like, the resellers have got a bunch of several year old MSL 2 parts that haven't been stored properly and they know their prospective customers won't buy them if they're more than a year old.

[Nortek-Chris]

Had the stock alert set up on T.I's website for a part, got the email telling me the part had come into stock whilst I was on the laptop with my email client open, I loaded the site in seconds only to find the part still showing as out of stock. This is the fourth time its happened. No idea if the T.I site is sending the emails hours after the stock appears, or if there are just thousands of scalpers all sat on T.I site just waiting for stock alerts of various parts, and its all going in seconds!.

[cdev]

The now-rich countries got where they are today by speculating in prices in commodities and maintaining a wide variety of protective tariffs, not lasseiz-faire capitalism. They only adopted the current policies after they already had a comfortable position and wanted to defend it.

Contrary to what most people think.

See "Kicking out the Ladders" by Ha-Joon Chang  Its a very informative book. He has done lots of YouTube videos too.

The weird market is not only exploding, it's doing better than the authorized distributors, since the bastards bought all of the supplies for various chips and are now selling them at insane prices. A chip that normally costs ~5 USD is now being offered for ~120 USD by certain vendors, who seem to have incredible amounts of it and it was certainly not bought out by them in order to screw everyone over, further amplifying the ongoing shitstorm. I do hope that they get eaten by rabid gerbils or some such.

It's a shame anti-hoarding laws were only used for toilet paper and masks.


In a supply crisis the efficient market hypothesis is bull. Rationing is the economically optimal way to assign supply, not driving everyone without the size to deal directly with manufacturers (who are rationing among their customers) or very deep pockets out of business.

Food and water security is a sort of similar issue since corporations are legally now people and hoarding (or speculating on food commodity prices) is controversial, depending on who you speak to such speculation is a sacred right that must be preserved, or "hoarding" and a predatory activity that causes people to starve and die if they cannot pay whatever is demanded of them for the scarce commodity. One doesnt have to look far back into the future to see truly horrible moments when millions of people died because of food speculation. I don't think there are any international laws restricting electronics parts hoarding, even though juridical person's (companies) lives depend on the supply of parts. Maybe there should be? 

I was able to find this..

Safeguarding food security in volatile global markets

https://www.fao.org/3/i2107e/i2107e10.pdf

Its somewhat similar to the water mining issue, but its not as dire.

[JPortici]

Just received a mail from the contractor that they can't find a 65 cent can transceiver. The broker scalper quoted 87 euros each for 100 of them

If anybody had some MCP2562-E/MF or alternatives laying around.. (DFN, 5V with VIO pin, CAN 2.0, not FD, is fine too)

[IDEngineer]

CAN transceivers seem to go in waves. We've got at least four different families, from four different vendors, qualified at the moment and it can still be hard to find them. Fortunately there is a bit of standardization in pinouts and packages for those, which helps a bit.

We used to consume a lot of the Microchip MCP2562's that you mentioned but those became unobtainium 18+ months ago.

[tom66]

Octopart now has an inventory history preview, showing the last year of inventory data for many parts.  Quite nice!

[VK3DRB]

Octopart now has an inventory history preview, showing the last year of inventory data for many parts.  Quite nice!

I notice Octopart and Findchips list differing inventories for the same chip. More so now than six months ago.
One of them (can't remember which) now lists LCSC as a source. That's a step in the right direction.

[JPortici]

Fortunately there is a bit of standardization in pinouts and packages for those, which helps a bit.

Yes, but the only variant you find right now in quantities does not have a shutdown pin, rather a "silent" pin. Idle current is now in the mA order instead of the uA order and that can be a pretty darn problem if your gadget is supposed to be attached directly to the battery

[JPortici]

Octopart now has an inventory history preview, showing the last year of inventory data for many parts.  Quite nice!

Octopart used to have that years ago (up until 2018 IIRC), along with the PRICE HISTORY of the part.

[SilverSolder]

Octopart now has an inventory history preview, showing the last year of inventory data for many parts.  Quite nice!

Octopart used to have that years ago (up until 2018 IIRC), along with the PRICE HISTORY of the part.

...Then they got leant on by the suppliers...

[Sal Ammoniac]

If you think things are bad now, just wait until China invades Taiwan. It's not a matter of "if" but of "when".

[floobydust]

Congress hasn't finalized the $52B chip funding bill, it's spinning around in political stupidity. The ground-breaking shovel is not yet needed for the "announced" new fabs.
Despite promises, it will take many years to get the fabs financed and up and running, product rolling out the doors- and who knows what IC's those will be?
Even then, it doesn't make sense as the chemicals, silicon, IC packaging etc. is heavily outsourced to Asia. Plopping a fab on local ground- it's still totally reliant on Asia.

I'm predicting a fail at on-shoring semiconductor fab because it's extremely rooted in Asia and advanced technology takes a long time, years, to establish.
china doing the same as putin right now "reclaiming their rightful clay" yup it's going to happen and nothing can stop it.

[magic]

Ukrainians are now learning the same lesson we have learned 80 years ago, but Taiwan would be a little harder pill for Uncle Sam to swallow