How is Chipageddon affecting you?

[rs20]

It's the absurd lead-times, 2 years    I wouldn't think OnSemi/Fairchild would be that long out, why even bother with the precious silicon/fab you have, to make small fish?

Isn't 2 years just a numerical way of expressing "we're not really even bothering with this right now"? I don't quite know what number you're expecting to see there if they "don't even bother" as you expect them to. Seems like they can either use a huge lead time, or declare the part permanently obsolete, which I imagine would be a shortsighted thing to do?

[VK3DRB]

In Australia, I recently sent a small package to two suburbs away (about 10 km). It took Australia Post EIGHT days to deliver it, at a ripoff cost of $9.30 for shipping. I would have driven it there, but the state government could fine me $5K for violating our strict lockdown if I was caught. (Melbourne broke the world record for lock down.. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-10-03/melbourne-longest-lockdown/100510710)

On Friday night, I order parts from Digikey in some village in Minnesota in the USA called Thief River Falls. The parts arrived this morning (Tuesday)... 3.5 days to go from other side of the planet to my workplace here in the suburbs of Melbourne. Shipping was free. For all their woes, Digikey and UPS provide an excellent shipping service. I have never been let down by them. But to Australia Post: "Hello, McFly..."

Even so, I am finding data on Digikey's website to be getting more and more inaccurate. Links to datasheets are missing or broken and sometimes parts are incorrectly labelled obsolete or no longer manufactured when they are not. It's not just Digikey. Manufacturers' websites with data are getting less trusted too with incorrect or out-of-date information. I don't know why this is happening other than the industry is a lot more damaged than what we might think. But for delivery speed and value, Digikey gets 10/10. Australia Post gets 1/10... one point because they didn't lose it.

[Bassman59]

It's the absurd lead-times, 2 years    I wouldn't think OnSemi/Fairchild would be that long out, why even bother with the precious silicon/fab you have, to make small fish?

Isn't 2 years just a numerical way of expressing "we're not really even bothering with this right now"? I don't quite know what number you're expecting to see there if they "don't even bother" as you expect them to. Seems like they can either use a huge lead time, or declare the part permanently obsolete, which I imagine would be a shortsighted thing to do?

When you see lead time of 99 weeks, you know that they only have a two-digit width for the field!

And yeah, it really means "we have no idea."

[IDEngineer]

UPS, FedEx, and DHL are a big piece of the solution to today's supply chain problems (presuming the parts exist at all). We've been spending enormous amounts of money on shipping lately. First, because we have to scour the planet to find parts. Second, because if we then just accept normal shipping they'll get tied up in the whole container ship nightmare.

To get parts these days, you often must:

1) Search them out across the globe;
2) Pay with company credit card or wire transfer (net 30 terms or lines of credit are a waste of time, they'll sell them instead to someone who will give them faster money); and
3) Ship via air so they can't play games with packaging and shipping delays.

We are now acting as the Purchasing department for most of the hard-to-find parts in our products. Our Contract Manufacturer simply cannot react fast enough; by the time their credit is confirmed by the seller's Accounts Payable department, the seller's Sales department has already sold the parts to someone with faster money. So we have established our own relationships with several key vendors and make instant payments to shove our way to the front of the line. The seller loves our immediate payment, we get our parts, and our CM keeps the production line running. BTW, we're saving back some of those shipping costs thanks to far better direct pricing than our CM used to get dealing with distributors.

This is how business gets done today. I hope it goes back to normal but we have to keep the lines running in the meantime.

[IDEngineer]

It's not really about finding the part. This is a 40 year old jellybean mosfet made by many companies. It's the absurd lead-times, 2 years    I wouldn't think OnSemi/Fairchild would be that long out, why even bother with the precious silicon/fab you have, to make small fish?

Not all fab lines are interchangable. The feature sizes can be wildly different, for example. I'm not sure Intel could make discrete FET's on their CPU lines even if they wanted to.

WRT finding things like 2N7002's... we're having to do a lot of spot-substitutions these days. Fortunately we're careful to choose industry standard packages and pinouts when possible, so finding a substitute for a 2N7002 in SOT23-3 (which we do use!) isn't difficult - just more expensive. And we might use a different substitute part on the next production run. This is another super annoying part of this situation: We estimate ~30% of our Engineering time is presently being spent qualifying adequate substitutes for unavailable parts. That's time which should be spend on R&D, but Purchasing - whom we love and respect - does not have the technical skills to evaluate possible substitutes so Engineering gets sucked into the problem.

This also happened a couple of years ago when MLCC's were hard to find. At first Purchasing figured all MLCC's of the same value are interchangeable, right? Just buy whatever appears to meet the specs. It was only when Engineering showed them that DC bias affects the real-world capacitance that they started calling us before buying off-spec swaps. We hate the lost time, but we've had far fewer part substitution problems since then.

[floobydust]

To me it looks like chipageddon is getting worse. So many MCU's are cleaned out with 52-week lead-times. There are now little shipments, a thousand every two months or so to some distributors. But problem is the scalpers (brokers) will scoop up those parts and resell for profit. It's like daytrading almost, assuming they've bought a popular part. They exasperate the supply chain problems. You have to buy the parts within seconds of the email notification that some stock arrived, or they vanish.

Finding substitutes, can you get your schedules pushed back? Engineering takes a 30% productivity hit sourcing alternate parts and yet that Gantt chart remains unchanged 

[Algoma]

Curious to see the number of mega foundries set to come online in the next while.  It may be lean supply now, but its sure going to swing hard the other way when the logistics finally gets back on track. I'm at least seeing (some) lowering of shipping prices and transit times already... That at least one step so far.

[tszaboo]

In Australia, I recently sent a small package to two suburbs away (about 10 km). It took Australia Post EIGHT days to deliver it, at a ripoff cost of $9.30 for shipping. I would have driven it there, but the state government could fine me $5K for violating our strict lockdown if I was caught. (Melbourne broke the world record for lock down.. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-10-03/melbourne-longest-lockdown/100510710)

On Friday night, I order parts from Digikey in some village in Minnesota in the USA called Thief River Falls. The parts arrived this morning (Tuesday)... 3.5 days to go from other side of the planet to my workplace here in the suburbs of Melbourne. Shipping was free. For all their woes, Digikey and UPS provide an excellent shipping service. I have never been let down by them. But to Australia Post: "Hello, McFly..."

Even so, I am finding data on Digikey's website to be getting more and more inaccurate. Links to datasheets are missing or broken and sometimes parts are incorrectly labelled obsolete or no longer manufactured when they are not. It's not just Digikey. Manufacturers' websites with data are getting less trusted too with incorrect or out-of-date information. I don't know why this is happening other than the industry is a lot more damaged than what we might think. But for delivery speed and value, Digikey gets 10/10. Australia Post gets 1/10... one point because they didn't lose it.

Meanwhile I ordered toothpaste from a familiar online shop, because they didn't have my trusted one on the shelves in the local supermarket. And I got it next day express delivery from Germany, with only this in the package.
Something is broken with the entire shipping system.

[Microdoser]

In Australia, I recently sent a small package to two suburbs away (about 10 km). It took Australia Post EIGHT days to deliver it, at a ripoff cost of $9.30 for shipping. I would have driven it there, but the state government could fine me $5K for violating our strict lockdown if I was caught. (Melbourne broke the world record for lock down.. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-10-03/melbourne-longest-lockdown/100510710)

On Friday night, I order parts from Digikey in some village in Minnesota in the USA called Thief River Falls. The parts arrived this morning (Tuesday)... 3.5 days to go from other side of the planet to my workplace here in the suburbs of Melbourne. Shipping was free. For all their woes, Digikey and UPS provide an excellent shipping service. I have never been let down by them. But to Australia Post: "Hello, McFly..."

Even so, I am finding data on Digikey's website to be getting more and more inaccurate. Links to datasheets are missing or broken and sometimes parts are incorrectly labelled obsolete or no longer manufactured when they are not. It's not just Digikey. Manufacturers' websites with data are getting less trusted too with incorrect or out-of-date information. I don't know why this is happening other than the industry is a lot more damaged than what we might think. But for delivery speed and value, Digikey gets 10/10. Australia Post gets 1/10... one point because they didn't lose it.

A 100% lockdown should eradicate Covid completely in roughly the time a person is infectious for. As far as I know that is about 2 weeks (might be wrong here), so if everyone isolated fully for that amount of time then even a person newly infected would not be infectious when they next interacted with another person, at which point nobody would have covid. In the worst scenario, a two person household might have to lockdown for twice as long (because of serial infection instead of parallel), three-person household three times as long etc.

What that says to me is, Melbourne is the place that ignored lockdown the most.

[Howardlong]

But problem is the scalpers (brokers) will scoop up those parts and resell for profit.

That's precisely my view, it's like Mad Max at the moment, it's common to find > 10x pricing.

Finding substitutes, can you get your schedules pushed back? Engineering takes a 30% productivity hit sourcing alternate parts and yet that Gantt chart remains unchanged 

Whac-a-mole: even if you can rework, how long will the substitutes last?

[Bassman59]

What that says to me is, Melbourne is the place that ignored lockdown the most.

Clearly you've never been to Florida or Texas or Arizona ...

[jmelson]

Even so, I am finding data on Digikey's website to be getting more and more inaccurate. Links to datasheets are missing or broken and sometimes parts are incorrectly labelled obsolete or no longer manufactured when they are not.

I think "obsolete or no longer manufactured" means _DIGI-KEY_ has chosen to no longer stock that part.  I have been ordering an Assmann computer cable to go as an accessory with my boards for years.  Digi-Key suddenly comes up with 2000 piece minimum order quantity!  That's a $30,000 order!  They say this is the manufacturer's MOQ.  Well, Digi-Key is a "distributor", that't their JOB, order in large quantity and sell in smaller quantity.  Well, I found a computer stuff dealer on line that had an acceptable cable for half the price, NO MOQ!
So, ha ha, Digi-Key!  Lots more of this stuff going on at Digi-Key.

Jon

[jrs45]

We're hoarding semiconductors like crazy, anything that's not reasonably easily replaceable we grab as soon as we can.  We probably have about a year of production parts available now.  Both in our existing design, and a new design that we were just about finished with (argh!)

So yeah, it's partially our fault.

But we're small fries.  Still, laying out $xx,xxx in just semiconductors and related hurts the wallet quite a bit.

I miss hoarding masks and toilet paper, that stuff is so much less expensive.

[peter-h]

I am already buying Maxim chips for the "old" prices i.e. 1/3 of current franchised disti prices, from an overstock dealer.

So I think this bubble will burst soon.

The distribution business will try to hang on for as long as they can, because they are making loads of money, and a nice order overhang at silly prices is perfect

[spostma]

@ Microdoser, about your full lockdown idea;
Animals (mammals) also can carry and do pass on Covid-19,
so a 'perfect lockdown' is not going to eradicate it al all.

[peter-h]

That has been discussed in many places. It is impossible simply because so many people - roughly 20% of the population - cannot be sent home because they are needed for essential stuff like food delivery, running power stations, etc.

Also the home delivery business is capable of serving only about 10% of the market; the other 90% have to go to a supermarket. To change this is possible but nobody will invest in the capacity knowing that it will be redundant fairly soon afterwards. Accordingly the home delivery services cater mostly for the upper end of the market, where people are willing to pay for better quality food.

[nctnico]

I'm pulling my hairs out... earlier this week I worked my ass off to get a board re-designed with components that are available and now onto resqueing a project that I try to make with components that won't play nice together (which I choose because my go-to components for the project at hand are not available any time soon). Turns out I need an FPGA with some buffering to glue two chips together. I never guessed I'd ever had to dead-bug prototype an FPGA but here it is:



This is the smallest Gowin FPGA there is in a 32 pin QFN package. Only half the wires are connected so I have some more needle-tip soldering to do but first let's test the FPGA design from the microcontroller. Until now all I implemented is a divide by two counter.

On the bright side: it is a good incentive to try out the Gowin FPGAs. Mighty interesting stuff. So far software and documentation are nice. I managed to write a piece of code to read the ID and bit-bang (SPI) the configuration into the FPGA from a microcontroller within an hour.

[VK3DRB]

WRT finding things like 2N7002's... we're having to do a lot of spot-substitutions these days....

Coincindentally I wanted to use a ubiquitous 2N7002, but I ended up using an alternative. Parts in general have escalated in price. Bus expander chips are damned expensive. I also notices LCSC are playing the broker game by increasing prices for parts nil stock in the West. eg: one MCU is $1.00 at Digikey and Mouser (nil stock everywhere), so LCSC increased their price up from around the same price to $3.19.

Espressif seems to be in strife regarding supply. It could be supply chain issues caused by rolling power blackouts damaging industry in China. A nasty winter in China is approaching and the electronics industry in China will be crippled.

[VK3DRB]

I'm pulling my hairs out... earlier this week I worked my ass off to get a board re-designed with components that are available

That rats nest looks nasty. I have had to do that sort of work on the odd occasion. I would rather be in jail. The worst thing is you finally qualify the alternative, and then supply of the original part immediately resumes. Texas Instruments can't be relied on because there is no certainty as to when parts will be available.

[Microdoser]

Recently I got an email notification that a part I need was in stock. I checked Digi-Key less than half an hour later, when I saw the email. All 15000 were gone, and the stock was nil.

[Psi]

i went through 3 PCB and BOM changes over the span of 3 weeks before I got a combination that stayed in stock long enough for the PCB order to be placed, reviewed, paid, EQ'ed and ordered.

In short, it sucks.

[nctnico]

I'm pulling my hairs out... earlier this week I worked my ass off to get a board re-designed with components that are available

That rats nest looks nasty. I have had to do that sort of work on the odd occasion. I would rather be in jail. The worst thing is you finally qualify the alternative, and then supply of the original part immediately resumes. Texas Instruments can't be relied on because there is no certainty as to when parts will be available.

Yeah. I'll probably design the Gowin FPGA out again as well if this product takes off in quantities and use a more capable microcontroller when available. Turns out Gowin hands out licenses which expire after one year so getting a quick fix done a few years down the road can open a whole can of worms regarding dealing with licenses and (maybe) forced software updates. Pity because the Gowin software is nice to work with and the documentation is very good.

[GreyWoolfe]

I was speaking to someone from the IT department regarding an issue I was having with my laptop and I asked if he knew when we were going to get upgraded phones and laptops.  He said he wasn't sure as there was an issue in getting laptops in the quantity necessary.  I am guessing that they don't want them dribbling in and piecemeal configure and ship.

[harerod]

I was speaking to someone from the IT department regarding an issue I was having with my laptop and I asked if he knew when we were going to get upgraded phones and laptops.  He said he wasn't sure as there was an issue in getting laptops in the quantity necessary.  I am guessing that they don't want them dribbling in and piecemeal configure and ship.

OMG, this looks like whole new can of worms. Who decides who gets a new machine? I remember starting a new job and IT built a new machine for me. So now I had a device faster than what the old hands had. Bad start into a company fraught with politics. I didn't stay too long.

"Why did Woolfie get a new laptop, while I still have to do with mine from 2 B.C.?" - asks the guy who mostly surfs the web and and plays Minesweeper. 

Fact is that we are seeing issues procuring replacements. I never expected to buy used routers from Ebay for professional work...

[tszaboo]

We just ordered some TI parts that were 15 USD instead of the normal 0.5. Also contacting TI to get the parts next time they make it: It will be in our webshop, buy it there.
So they just sell it to those scalpels in china, and refuse to give us first time buy opportunity. Not just to us, but also to our distributors, like Avnet or Arrow. Basically they are complete dicks about it, because they know whatever they make the market will buy it.