How is Chipageddon affecting you?

[rsjsouza]

However now we can build models on a certain number of wind turbines, combined with a certain amount of storage, and in the southern parts of the country combining this with solar PV, and test such a system in various scenarios that shows that we will never have a power outage in 300 years based on known and changing weather patterns.  No (natural) gas required, no nuclear required.

Back in the university our classes about power distribution always focused on the peak energy and redundancies to the system. Known and changing weather patterns is the norm for 99.9999% of the time, but the accommodation was always targeting how to solve the remaining 0.0001% where availability can be impacted.

Not only today's events in geopolitics but also Texas' outages in 2021 (caused by a slew of factors) make me believe that removing power generation solutions can't be a serious proposition.

[tom66]

It's not as if there wouldn't be generation still running on the grid, but that the generation would be a combination of intermittent and storage, rather than base load.   We can store months of natural gas, doing the same with hydrogen or another convenient gas is also practical.

The problems in Texas were more to do with mismanagement and underfunding than any kind of failure of renewable energy.  There are island nations using purely renewable energy already; it's only time before the scale becomes ever more impressive.  It's not going to happen overnight but by 2030-2035 or so it's going to become increasingly commonplace.  It will massively increase energy security for any given country, no more geopolitics over oil supply.

[IDEngineer]

There are island nations using purely renewable energy already

The ideal is that every home generates its own power. Right now that could be done with natural gas (albeit more per KWH than most people pay from "the grid") with a NatGas genset at every house. Well under $10K particularly if done during construction. But regardless of the fuel source, we should "go local" (not just down to the island/continent, but to the property/structure) to eliminate dependency upon all the interconnects. Every time there's severe weather it downs power lines and takes out power supply to huge swaths of homes and businesses. We (re)spend gobs of money (re)constructing all this aboveground infrastructure with the full knowledge it will come down again, yet there's never enough money to bury it out of harm's way in the first place. If each property generated its own power, all of that hassle and agony and risk and danger and waste would simply disappear.

(As to my NatGas example, yes that is dependent upon a centralized source. But you'll notice its infrastructure is underground, and mind-numbingly reliable, which proves my point. Unless you were living in Texas last year, when was the last time your NatGas "went out" unexpectedly? I've lived in four states in many different houses, from the very southern border with Mexico to the very northern border with Canada, every one served by NatGas, and never once in my entire life of many decades has the gas gone out without warning. Never. Not once. But since "the prevailing wisdom" is that we need to get away from NatGas because it's a scary terrible nasty fossil fuel, achieving power independence at the property level will not require even NatGas's underground infrastructure.)

Power generation, as with most things, is best when distributed. Concentration of power (whether electrical or political!) is always and everywhere a bad idea.

[coppice]

There are island nations using purely renewable energy already;

Name one, and let's see if we can pick that apart.

[floobydust]

Do we need to derail the thread into a pissing match about renewables? Between that and economist's bullshit theories about the "efficient market", nothing is improving.
A big failure by all is ignoring world demand - for energy: crude oil, natural gas, electricity. Demand for semiconductors as well. We are always using more and more and more. +ve slope.
High prices are exactly what manufacturers want for their wares, best is being just under the price point that causes demand destruction.
Adding production, new capacity takes a very long time. Even for crude oil it's a couple years between a new well drilled to producing oil.
With semiconductors, a new fab takes years- 15 months alone after making the new building and equipment is installed, to get product made.

Why build a new fab when it costs many billion$ and high risk that it's either old tech by time it's finished, massive financing is required, or another company's fabs are also go online causing a glut. The DRAM market and fab history, also the polysilicon market is an example of a bad yoyo where it went from under to oversupply, and industry remained very cautious about growth.
The only incentive right now causing the semiconductor industry to expand is the government subsidies and tax breaks. Otherwise, why bother.

[peter-h]

Is there really a significant increase in demand for end user products?

It seems to be 99% panic buying.

[MT]

Cost of shipping a 40 foot container from Asia to Europe/USA
https://www.drewry.co.uk/supply-chain-advisors/supply-chain-expertise/world-container-index-assessed-by-drewry

[floobydust]

Is there really a significant increase in demand for end user products? [...]

It's a (pandemic) boom- record semiconductor sales, double-digit increases, a (second) high just below the all time 2010 record. Fabs as well.
Foundry market {forecast} to grow 20% this year grew 26% last year.
Smartphones are one big piggy, as well as PC's. IC Insights Microprocessor Growth Will Slow in 2022 after Cellphone MPU Surge
"cellphone application processor sales jumped to a record-high $35.0 billion in 2021"

[tom66]

Moving on from the alt energy diversion.

I think I might have found the most overpriced scalped part yet;  a normally $10-12 USD PIC24 is $1,115 USD on Win-Source.
https://www.win-source.net/microchip-technology-pic24ep512gu810-ipt.html

Anyone beat me?

[IDEngineer]

Is that for a whole reel of 1000?!?

[tszaboo]

Pre-chip shortage finding precision negative LDOs was a bit like hen's teeth.  You could find them, but far less selection than you would have liked.

For a few designs I just rolled my own using a spare op-amp on the board.

This is where blokes like you and TszaNand will separate the sheep from the goats.

When the rubber hits the road, a lot of spoilt kids are going to left wanting.

I need like 10 in total, so you can fuck right off with your attitude, I'm not going to spend time playing around with zeners or opamps just to get a stable voltage. 

[Ed.Kloonk]

[ed upset the apple cart]


 

[MT]

Moving on from the alt energy diversion.

I think I might have found the most overpriced scalped part yet;  a normally $10-12 USD PIC24 is $1,115 USD on Win-Source.
https://www.win-source.net/microchip-technology-pic24ep512gu810-ipt.html

Anyone beat me?

The 1637 Dutch Tulip mania?

Man of Nobleisity order his militia to trample his tulips in an attempt to stabilize tulip prices.
https://cdn10.phillymag.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2017/03/gerome-tulip-folly-940x540.jpg

[jmelson]

Arrgh!  I ordered some parts from Digi-Key.  One is the Analog Devices AD2S1200 resolver-digital converter chip, Digi-Key shows 322 in stock at Rochester Electronics, but they can't ship until June 26th!  Why does D-K show stock at Rochester if they are all allocated?  Seems deceptive!
Jon

I spent all WEEK trying to call Rochester, they never return calls, never answer.  Groan.  Analog Devices has the part, but minimum order is 100 pieces. They do give a volume discount, but still $17 each.  That is a fairly big order for me.
Jon

[floobydust]

Were you hitting their head office? Rochester is strange, they seem to get early dibs on EOL parts and then scoop them up. Mostly a warehouse and another middleman.
I'm not how they pull dies out of storage, like someone's frozen eggs, and package the parts as another manufacturer.

"Rochester provides 100% authorized stock of active and end-of-life (EOL) devices from over 70 leading semiconductor manufacturers. As a licensed semiconductor manufacturer, Rochester has manufactured over 20,000 device types. With over 12 billion die in stock, Rochester has the capability to manufacture over 70,000 device types.

"Rochester provides the following services to our valued semiconductor customers and supplier partners:
Wafer Processing: Wafer map generation, back-grind, dicing, inspection, and pick and place
Wafer Storage: State-of-the-art facilities for long-term storage in a nitrogen-controlled environment with real time monitoring and backup capability"

[jonovid]

Following Russia’s move into Ukraine, experts ? warn that the conflict could impact the global chip industry
Ukraine supplies 90 percent of US semiconductor grade neon
https://venturebeat.com/2022/02/24/ukraine-supplies-90-percent-of-us-semiconductor-grade-neon-what-it-means-to-chip-supply-chain/

[Howardlong]

Arrgh!  I ordered some parts from Digi-Key.  One is the Analog Devices AD2S1200 resolver-digital converter chip, Digi-Key shows 322 in stock at Rochester Electronics, but they can't ship until June 26th!  Why does D-K show stock at Rochester if they are all allocated?  Seems deceptive!
Jon

I spent all WEEK trying to call Rochester, they never return calls, never answer.  Groan.  Analog Devices has the part, but minimum order is 100 pieces. They do give a volume discount, but still $17 each.  That is a fairly big order for me.
Jon

Rochester have been weird throughout the past eighteen months or so. Early on, they would only let you  buy complete or remnant reels: no reel splitting because "too busy". The last time I used them about four months ago it took two weeks for them to dispatch from their warehouse.

They do deliver, but it is reminiscent of walking into the only poker game in town.

[Howardlong]

Re: Pivotal Electronics Ltd.

I've placed two orders through this broker in the past nine or ten months, TL;DR: both have been successful.

In the UK, they're little more than a store front to their operation in Hong Kong.

The first order I placed with them, back in July 2021, they took payment directly into their UK bank account which was very convenient. Delivery was around a week.

The last order I placed, about three weeks ago, was for the same part, but was double the price (but beggars can't be choosers, right?). They also changed their terms, no longer can I pay into their UK account, I had to do a SWIFT transfer into their Hong Kong account. This was still inclusive of VAT, and they still present their invoice with a UK VAT number, and after a couple of emails I gritted my teeth and sent the money. They also offer a card payment facility with a 5%+ charge, but I did the TT route as it was cheaper, although in retrospect perhaps a CC payment would have offered me some form of buyer protection.

They delivered around a week after payment. They are responsive to emails but there's a bit of a communication barrier. As they're a broker, they have to wait for the parts to get to hem before forwarding themselves & are in a position to provide a tracking number, but in total, it took about a week from payment to receipt of parts. The parts are genuine.

[Infraviolet]

Any guesses yet as to when the chip crisis might ease?

I thought that fab capacity was now back to what it should be, but it seems demand is still well above pre-shortage, and prices and lead times remain colossal. And it seems the chip crisis has now shifted down-market to the older less fancy chip types, certainly when it began you coud get AVRs and standard logic gates on the likes of RS, it was the cutting edge stuff that was hard to source, now you can't get any of those older chips (at least in SMD formats).

Is the end of the chip crisis going to start with the fancy stuff bought at industrially high volume, then move down to old chips and small scale supply, just as the start of it seems to have done?

[tszaboo]

Any guesses yet as to when the chip crisis might ease?

I thought that fab capacity was now back to what it should be, but it seems demand is still well above pre-shortage, and prices and lead times remain colossal. And it seems the chip crisis has now shifted down-market to the older less fancy chip types, certainly when it began you coud get AVRs and standard logic gates on the likes of RS, it was the cutting edge stuff that was hard to source, now you can't get any of those older chips (at least in SMD formats).

Is the end of the chip crisis going to start with the fancy stuff bought at industrially high volume, then move down to old chips and small scale supply, just as the start of it seems to have done?

The issue is not fab capacity. The issue is China buying all the components to sell it back for 20x the price.
It is solved when politics gets involved.

[tom66]

I think it's easing somewhat.  The problem is the supply shortage has caused manufacturers to hoard stock.  This is the logical thing to do when you think there may be a shortage, even though the risk is that it exasperates the shortage.  This will begin to ease as inventories fill up.

[jmelson]

Rochester have been weird throughout the past eighteen months or so. Early on, they would only let you  buy complete or remnant reels: no reel splitting because "too busy". The last time I used them about four months ago it took two weeks for them to dispatch from their warehouse.

They do deliver, but it is reminiscent of walking into the only poker game in town.

Well, I really just want to buy what are SUPPOSED to be current AD parts.  AD shows the 2S1200 as a "current" part, and in stock at the factory.
Digi-Key only shows stock at Rochester.  Mouser shows lead time over a year!  But, the AD store has a minimum order quantity of 100 pieces, even with a good volume discount, that is still a lot of money.  At the current rate of sales, that could be a 5-year supply.  (I used to sell these at a much fater rate.)

I have been calling the Rochester "customer support" number, they never answer but allow you to leave a message.  I have also left a message on their on-line contact us form, never got a reply.
Jon

[IDEngineer]

The issue is not fab capacity. The issue is China buying all the components to sell it back for 20x the price. It is solved when politics gets involved.

If you think today's situation is bad, wait until China decides to attack Taiwan. Ukraine will be lost in the noise compared to the global impacts of TSMC and other electronics manufacturers going behind either a war or the Bamboo Curtain.

[tom66]

If anything, Ukraine has shown how drawn out any conflict against a modern army will be and therefore lessened a chance of a Chinese invasion.  Taiwan is well-supplied with American technology and weapons, it's an island nation (which is implicitly easier to defend) and the US has a strategic presence in the area (and treaties to defend Taiwan, although admittedly they never followed up on the same treaty they had with Ukraine.)

What Russia's invasion of Ukraine has shown is how logistics is so much more important than how many tanks you have or whether you have air dominance.  If your tanks don't have fuel, and your soldiers are hungry, the pace will be terrible;  this provides ample opportunity for a defending force.

Besides, unlike Russia,  China is a high-technology economy which depends on Western trade for its very survival - it has limited oil or gas resources and is dependent on external imports. 

[SiliconWizard]

Any guesses yet as to when the chip crisis might ease?

I thought that fab capacity was now back to what it should be, but it seems demand is still well above pre-shortage, and prices and lead times remain colossal. And it seems the chip crisis has now shifted down-market to the older less fancy chip types, certainly when it began you coud get AVRs and standard logic gates on the likes of RS, it was the cutting edge stuff that was hard to source, now you can't get any of those older chips (at least in SMD formats).

Is the end of the chip crisis going to start with the fancy stuff bought at industrially high volume, then move down to old chips and small scale supply, just as the start of it seems to have done?

The issue is not fab capacity. The issue is China buying all the components to sell it back for 20x the price.
It is solved when politics gets involved.

I have hardly ever seen politics getting involved solving anything, sadly. It usually makes things worse.