How is Chipageddon affecting you?

[IDEngineer]

1) I thought (but haven't recently researched) that rare earths shifted to centrifuge refinement years ago. That's what supposedly made them economical enough to start using in large volumes.

2) Thorium nuclear power is a Really Good Idea, so if rare earth refinement yields a bunch of thorium that's yet ANOTHER reason we should be finalizing production designs for thorium-fueled reactors. Thorium is plentiful in the Earth's crust, has low radiation, cannot be used for weapons, etc. The USA actually had thorium based reactors decades ago but they lost favor to uranium based reactors because the latter yield weapon-useful byproducts, while thorium does not. We need to dust off thorium technology, especially if the pursuit of rare earths is going to be making it even more available.

I believe India is actively pursuring thorium fueled reactors. If they get there first, they're going to have a serious advantage over the rest of the world with a power source that is plentiful, has minimal waste handling issues, zero carbon footprint, etc. Isn't that what everyone says they want these days?

[BravoV]

I believe India is actively pursuring thorium fueled reactors. If they get there first, they're going to have a serious advantage over the rest of the world with a power source that is plentiful, has minimal waste handling issues, zero carbon footprint, etc. Isn't that what everyone says they want these days?

Its China, and planned to go live this year -> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TMSR-LF1

[IDEngineer]

Unfortunately, a molten salt reactor fueled by thorium can indeed produce weapon byproducts. Thanks, China... just when you could have invested in world-benefitting tech you decide to do the opposite, likely further dissuading people from pursuing thorium power.

[VK3DRB]

I really want to use some Texas Instruments ISO1430 isolated RS485 transceiver chip, to replace a very expensive AD ADM2587 used in someone else's design I am fixing up (two per board). No surprise, none available except from a few broker$.

90 WEEKS LEADTIME!

Has TI got any credibility left? Someone should tell the CEO of TI, Rich Templeton, we need results, not excuses. He pocketed $19 million in 2020... for what?! This malarkey has gone on long enough.

[IDEngineer]

I just tried to help a VP of Engineering friend at his generally non-electronics company (a big enough name that it's 100% certain everyone here has heard of it) find some specific TI chips for R&D. Low quantity, basically just needs a handful so they can proceed with development. Since none are to be found in the usual channels, I suggested he contact TI's closest Applications Engineer to see if they'd sample them some. Big company, potentially long product life with good volumes, etc. I figured this was in the bag.

In his words: "Texas Instruments told me to pound sand."

So to answer your question: No. TI has no credibility left. At all. They intentionally turned away the VP of Engineering of a huge multinational corporation who wants to design their chips into his company's products. I'm no longer sure what business TI thinks they're in, but it's definitely not the semiconductor business.

[VK3DRB]

“Our job isn’t to predict the future, it’s to prepare the company so we can handle anything and we’ve done that,” Chief Financial Officer Rafael Lizardi said in an interview.  ,  ,  and more  !

Maybe it should be "Our job isn't to support to our engineering customers, it's to maximise the personal wealth of our senior executives."

Life as an electronics engineer in global chip shortage: https://www.theregister.com/2022/03/25/chip_shortage_report/

I might need to stick to the AD chip. At least AD is a trusted company and I know you can get engineering samples from them, where TI could not care less.

[tom66]

So to answer your question: No. TI has no credibility left. At all. They intentionally turned away the VP of Engineering of a huge multinational corporation who wants to design their chips into his company's products. I'm no longer sure what business TI thinks they're in, but it's definitely not the semiconductor business.

It was this strategy that killed Maxim off in the eyes of many engineers - TI had better be very careful here.

Microchip, comparably, does seem to be managing the shortage/overdemand better.  They seem to have reasonable enough lead times and keep small quantities available for sampling and prototypes.

We have made the decision at the place I work to avoid designing in any TI part for the foreseeable future, unless it is totally unavoidable.  There are very few TI parts that don't have an alternative from another manufacturer. 

[floobydust]

Chip shortage? Bottom line doin' fine. Sure looks like they're rats selling only to the big fish.
As well, they all seem to be building 300mm, not 200mm fab. MCU's are critical to small/medium businesses and I don't see any stock, many 65-105 weeks out FFS.

[thinkfat]

I get the impression that we small guys have been living off of a mountain of excess stock that has piled up over the years. Now that mountain has been consumed, the big birds have pecked it all up.

The production of chips is in huge batches, naturally, because once you have the process parameters aligned for maximum yield, you just want to produce the same silicon as much as is reasonable. So, the production is not very flexible, the excess stock is gone, pipeline is dry, it will take a long time and maybe a recession to get the stock levels back up to what we're used to.

[floobydust]

I'd buy that except new IC's are fine for samples, eval boards etc. Marketing of new semi's is still continuing without a problem.

[tom66]

I'm sure the "small guys" are an important part of the business for TI, MCHP, etc.  They do spend marketing money on winning us over.  Typically there's something like 80% of all business comes from 20% of your customers (the 'big guys') - but the other 20% of small business is still worth chasing.

But the big guys have more cash and can outbid us, so the distributor stock is poor.

Bottom line is don't design a non-second-source part in if you can avoid it.  If you can't, ensure the inventory levels are good, even better, buy anticipated stock beforehand.

[Karel]

I get the impression that we small guys have been living off of a mountain of excess stock that has piled up over the years. Now that mountain has been consumed, the big birds have pecked it all up.

The production of chips is in huge batches, naturally, because once you have the process parameters aligned for maximum yield, you just want to produce the same silicon as much as is reasonable. So, the production is not very flexible, the excess stock is gone, pipeline is dry, it will take a long time and maybe a recession to get the stock levels back up to what we're used to.

I always thought that this is where distributors like Farnell, Digikey, Mouser, etc. come in. They order big quantities from the manufacturers and store them
in their warehouses and sell them in low quantities to small and medium companies.

[thinkfat]

I get the impression that we small guys have been living off of a mountain of excess stock that has piled up over the years. Now that mountain has been consumed, the big birds have pecked it all up.

The production of chips is in huge batches, naturally, because once you have the process parameters aligned for maximum yield, you just want to produce the same silicon as much as is reasonable. So, the production is not very flexible, the excess stock is gone, pipeline is dry, it will take a long time and maybe a recession to get the stock levels back up to what we're used to.

I always thought that this is where distributors like Farnell, Digikey, Mouser, etc. come in. They order big quantities from the manufacturers and store them
in their warehouses and sell them in low quantities to small and medium companies.

That's right, and usually volume buyers get their parts directly from the manufacturer to avoid the distributor mark-up. But, the fabs didn't run for a while and so the big birds bought out the distributors instead. Now the fabs are running again but it will take some time to saturate the volume buyers and give distributors a chance to stock up.

[Kasper]

I just tried to help a VP of Engineering friend at his generally non-electronics company (a big enough name that it's 100% certain everyone here has heard of it) find some specific TI chips for R&D. Low quantity, basically just needs a handful so they can proceed with development. Since none are to be found in the usual channels, I suggested he contact TI's closest Applications Engineer to see if they'd sample them some. Big company, potentially long product life with good volumes, etc. I figured this was in the bag.

In his words: "Texas Instruments told me to pound sand."

So to answer your question: No. TI has no credibility left. At all. They intentionally turned away the VP of Engineering of a huge multinational corporation who wants to design their chips into his company's products. I'm no longer sure what business TI thinks they're in, but it's definitely not the semiconductor business.

Did you try asking on the TI community forum?  [/sarcasm]

I think this was before 2020, a local distributor / FAE (field app engineer) manager told me he was unhappy with TI and stopped dealing with them when they canned their FAE's in the hopes their forum would be a sufficient replacement.

[Kasper]

So to answer your question: No. TI has no credibility left. At all. They intentionally turned away the VP of Engineering of a huge multinational corporation who wants to design their chips into his company's products. I'm no longer sure what business TI thinks they're in, but it's definitely not the semiconductor business.

It was this strategy that killed Maxim off in the eyes of many engineers - TI had better be very careful here.

Microchip, comparably, does seem to be managing the shortage/overdemand better.  They seem to have reasonable enough lead times and keep small quantities available for sampling and prototypes.

We have made the decision at the place I work to avoid designing in any TI part for the foreseeable future, unless it is totally unavoidable.  There are very few TI parts that don't have an alternative from another manufacturer.

Do you think Analog's acquisition of Maxim will help Maxim recover?

[tom66]

I think this was before 2020, a local distributor / FAE (field app engineer) manager told me he was unhappy with TI and stopped dealing with them when they canned their FAE's in the hopes their forum would be a sufficient replacement.

TI binned off all of their distributor support channels in favour of doing it themselves; this was pre-COVID, I believe.  The result is that the support is harder to get because they don't have many reps in the UK.  Kinda predictable.  Microchip do it the same way, but to be honest FAEs have always been a last resort for me.  They are definitely more sales than engineering, and I just don't see that changing given how they structure the commission model.  (A typical FAE makes bugger all if they don't actually sell anything.)

...

Do you think Analog's acquisition of Maxim will help Maxim recover?

Arguably Maxim's ability to actually keep parts in stock is winning them designs already.   We've replaced five TI parts on 10k/year products with Maxim chips because we can actually get them.  (TI parts also got replaced by LT and MPS in a few places.)  About the only TI parts left are one weird DC-DC buck-boost chip (that became an LT part when a related board was designed) and an LVDS transceiver.  Of course, the LVDS transceiver can't be bought either, so maybe I need to figure out how to get rid of that next. 

OK, the quantity is small beans, probably less than $100k/year to TI.  But if we're doing it, many others will be too.  In five years, once the dust has settled, maybe TI finds itself with a much smaller market share.   They'll have to rebuild their reputation much like Maxim.  Good luck to them.

[nctnico]

So to answer your question: No. TI has no credibility left. At all. They intentionally turned away the VP of Engineering of a huge multinational corporation who wants to design their chips into his company's products. I'm no longer sure what business TI thinks they're in, but it's definitely not the semiconductor business.

It was this strategy that killed Maxim off in the eyes of many engineers - TI had better be very careful here.

Microchip, comparably, does seem to be managing the shortage/overdemand better.  They seem to have reasonable enough lead times and keep small quantities available for sampling and prototypes.

We have made the decision at the place I work to avoid designing in any TI part for the foreseeable future, unless it is totally unavoidable.  There are very few TI parts that don't have an alternative from another manufacturer.

The same thought has crossed my mind (still wouldn't consider parts from Microchip though). A big driving factor for me is that TI has failed to keep their production going again. During the credit-crunch (2008 / 2009) they also scaled down massively leading to a huge shortage of TI devices.

[jrs45]

I might need to stick to the AD chip. At least AD is a trusted company and I know you can get engineering samples from them, where TI could not care less.

I've found ADI to be just as bad, if not worse.  They completely screwed us by cancelling several production orders we made for a new design, all of which had verified leadtimes.  To make matters worse, we got stuck with the inventory we already purchased, which we can't use, because the later orders were canceled and we changed the design of the product.

Screw ADI.

Maybe I can sell them on the secondary market.  Anyone need ADAU1451/2?

[Kasper]

I guess this is part of the extra demand for electronics.

Reventure Consulting says "Inventory levels (aka unsold goods) across the US Economy have skyrocketed over the last two years. Particularly among Corporate Retailers (Walmart, Target, Home Depot) as well as Home Builders in the US Housing Market. "

He looked at SEC filings of 13 of the largest retailers in america: inventory excess on average is 27% while YoY sales growth average is 2.1%.



Inventory is Skyrocketing (DEFLATION DISCOUNTS Imminent)

[Algoma]

Raising prices as fast as they have, isn't going to help those excess inventory levels.. The whole market is protentially going to snap the other way.

They've been getting way too greedy with the backlog of demand. Once that clears, they're going to realise demand really hasn't increased as greatly as they hoped. And with the price increases they've done, much of that existing market will have moved onto alternate products.

All they're doing is loosing market share at this point by squeezing the market too hard for extra profits.

[thinkfat]

TI didn't only bin their support staff, they also culled the ranks of distributors who are allowed to stock TI parts. As a result, I cannot get TI parts any more from e.g. TME, my favorite supplier in Europe. That is very unfortunate as I now can only buy from Mouser, Digikey and maybe RS, who may or may not actually stock parts on the continent. Adding insult to injury, TME was the only distributor with reasonable shipping options to Germany. I could overnight parts I needed for just 5€.

[f4eru]

TI is working hard to make itself irrelevant in the chip market.

TI chips are now seen by purchasing specialists as the absolute Kryptonite that is forbidden to have in the BOM of new designs.
That means 5-10 years of slow but irreversible decline.

[AndyC_772]

TI chips are now seen by purchasing specialists as the absolute Kryptonite that is forbidden to have in the BOM of new designs.

That sounds like a sweeping generalisation. Could you supply reliable, concrete evidence that this is true please?

[tom66]

That sounds like a sweeping generalisation. Could you supply reliable, concrete evidence that this is true please?

Policy at our company (~25 engineers, ~£10m turnover) is to avoid TI unless there is no other alternative.  This is only because of the chip shortage, before they were often favoured.   I couldn't say for sure for other companies, but I've heard similar things online from other engineers.  Make of it what you will.

[f4eru]

Yep.
Same on both companies I work for.
Production got litterally stopped by TI availability, much much worse than other chipmakers.