STMicroelectronics Shortage

[S. Petrukhin]

We use STM32F031F6P6 for one of our main projects and its out of stock on farnell, arrow, mouser,.. everywhere and according to support, it wont be restocked for months.
Luckly STM32L031F6P6 is in stock everywhere, compatible and only requires a small amount of modification to software to work for us. But still, its annoying.

I ordered on LCSC STM32F103VC, found that they are not in stock, there is no VE to replace. I looked at the entire F103 series - not even the most popular C8 was in stock. It even scared me, and I began to think about other suppliers. But I sent a request to the LCSC, I need a small quantity of 50 pieces and I was told that everything is available for order with a period of 5-7 days. Maybe it's not a problem of having an MPU and there is some focus on a centralized warehouse?

[S. Petrukhin]

I ordered on LCSC STM32F103VC, found that they are not in stock, there is no VE to replace.

Today in an industry insider group chat, someone said he is willing to pay 90CNY($14)/unit on an F030RCT6 if the supplier can supply in kpcs+ quantity.

They do certified medical stuff, they don't care about money, but they want the exact part right now, and they want a lot of them.

I pointed them out that the Japanese reseller Chip1Stop has them for 1/10 his acceptable price this afternoon, and now all 5kpcs is gone.

There are still people having those chips, but they won't sell at MSRP. They will sell them on bidding.

This is the competition many of you are facing. STM32 is wild, really wild this time.

I. e. crooks and hucksters came to the MPU marketand now there will be auctions? Will consumers now fight for the product?

I looked at the LCSC warehouse - there are small stocks of the F103 series, but the price has become more than 2 times higher.

Friends, what do you think it is:
- high demand
- artificial scarcity to raise the indecent price
- it's time to look for a replacement for the STM32 they are leaving the market

[chickenHeadKnob]

I. e. crooks and hucksters came to the MPU marketand now there will be auctions? Will consumers now fight for the product?

I looked at the LCSC warehouse - there are small stocks of the F103 series, but the price has become more than 2 times higher.

Friends, what do you think it is:
- high demand
- artificial scarcity to raise the indecent price
- it's time to look for a replacement for the STM32 they are leaving the market

Your questions indicate you are younger person. If you last long enough in the electronics manufacturing business you will experience multiple cycles of "chip famine" with the attendant price gouging and backroom deals and scrambling. It is nothing new. The scarcity is real at the start of the cycle, but then it gets amplified by hoarding and profiteering behaviour. This can really kill small manufacturers that operate on thin margins and low volume. been there done that.

[S. Petrukhin]

I. e. crooks and hucksters came to the MPU marketand now there will be auctions? Will consumers now fight for the product?

I looked at the LCSC warehouse - there are small stocks of the F103 series, but the price has become more than 2 times higher.

Friends, what do you think it is:
- high demand
- artificial scarcity to raise the indecent price
- it's time to look for a replacement for the STM32 they are leaving the market

Your questions indicate you are younger person. If you last long enough in the electronics manufacturing business you will experience multiple cycles of "chip famine" with the attendant price gouging and backroom deals and scrambling. It is nothing new. The scarcity is real at the start of the cycle, but then it gets amplified by hoarding and profiteering behaviour. This can really kill small manufacturers that operate on thin margins and low volume. been there done that.

Do you consider ST to be a small producer and STM32 at the beginning of the cycle? Maybe I misunderstand something?

[hans]

We had the huge capacitor shortage a few years ago. 100nF caps were substituted with any nearby value, they were all sold out. I think in that case, artificial shortage was real because the margins for manufacturers was just not there. So if you then want to raise the price of your product, first take them of the market and see how people start begging at your door to produce them again for any cost.

To be honest I don't think ST is doing that. The F103 isn't exactly new, in fact you see it used everywhere. Many boards like Blue pills with F103 knockoffs probably fuel the popularity even further. The Cortex-m3 is a capable processor. It only lacks some DSP and FP instructions the m4 series has, but you explicitly have to use them to benefit from them. So for projects doing some USB, ethernet, serial comms and other generic stuff it's fine. You get tons of RAM, 12-bit 1MSPS+ ADCs, DMA, which is basically the same building blocks you have on the bigger MCU's these days (just less of them). 72MHz is only about half what you get on an entry level F4, so not that far off neither.
Really it's not surprising that people use them, as spending more is only warranted for specific use cases. In other projects, just cost optimize. E.g. 2$ vs 4$ MCU can translate to 5-15$ retail price difference, and for many products that's a lot of money (or margin).

I'm not surprised medical companies try to overbid by several times the MSRP. Recertification of products is real. In any other industry, if I would had to deal with a shortage of F103's, I would probably look at other chips from ST that are pin compatible with similar peripherals (probably F4 series), and add some extra BSP code to run the firmware on both chips. You probably don't even need 2 binaries as long as you stick to the least common denominator ISA, which is the Cortex-m3.

[S. Petrukhin]

We had the huge capacitor shortage a few years ago. 100nF caps were substituted with any nearby value, they were all sold out. I think in that case, artificial shortage was real because the margins for manufacturers was just not there. So if you then want to raise the price of your product, first take them of the market and see how people start begging at your door to produce them again for any cost.

To be honest I don't think ST is doing that. The F103 isn't exactly new, in fact you see it used everywhere. Many boards like Blue pills with F103 knockoffs probably fuel the popularity even further. The Cortex-m3 is a capable processor. It only lacks some DSP and FP instructions the m4 series has, but you explicitly have to use them to benefit from them. So for projects doing some USB, ethernet, serial comms and other generic stuff it's fine. You get tons of RAM, 12-bit 1MSPS+ ADCs, DMA, which is basically the same building blocks you have on the bigger MCU's these days (just less of them). 72MHz is only about half what you get on an entry level F4, so not that far off neither.
Really it's not surprising that people use them, as spending more is only warranted for specific use cases. In other projects, just cost optimize. E.g. 2$ vs 4$ MCU can translate to 5-15$ retail price difference, and for many products that's a lot of money (or margin).

I'm not surprised medical companies try to overbid by several times the MSRP. Recertification of products is real. In any other industry, if I would had to deal with a shortage of F103's, I would probably look at other chips from ST that are pin compatible with similar peripherals (probably F4 series), and add some extra BSP code to run the firmware on both chips. You probably don't even need 2 binaries as long as you stick to the least common denominator ISA, which is the Cortex-m3.

The transition to the F4 series does not look so expensive now, the price of the F3 has increased by more than 2 times. But this is the same ST that now raises concerns. There is no certainty for the F4 series either. Probably, we will have to consider GD32 or the Russian analog.

[S. Petrukhin]

I think in that case, artificial shortage was real because the margins for manufacturers was just not there.

What happened is nothing but acts of greedy brokers and manufacturers.
Put in simple, Samsung wanted to jack up price of MLCC since itself is a big player in the market, so they bought all 104 from all channels they can find, and this introduced market uncertainty.
Anyway they do not lose anything, they make appliances that eventually will consume all of them even if they didn't get to achieve what they originally planned to do.
With market uncertainty, brokers also started to stockpile 104, hoping to sell them for higher like in a Ponzi's game, which made it even worse.
Well, eventually the price went back to normal, and some brokers with enough stockpile bought in later after the price rise would lose, big time.
Shitty big corporation and greedy brokers, that it is.

Why didn't the Chinese guys flood Samsung with trillions of these capacitors? They could produce them and sell them by the ton until the crooks run out of money. 

[Kjelt]

What happened is nothing but acts of greedy brokers and manufacturers.
Put in simple, Samsung wanted to jack up price of MLCC since itself is a big player in the market, so they bought all 104 from all channels they can find, and this introduced market uncertainty.

Do you have a source / evidence to back this up ?

[tom66]

The words I heard from a friend of a friend was MLCC shortage was mostly caused by big players underinvesting in the low cost market (they make too little profit on low value 0402, 0603...) and an uptick in demand caused by new IoT type devices with substantial requirements for these parts.

Murata, Samsung, etc. are not too interested in selling you a lot of $0.0008 ceramic capacitors, they would rather sell you a few $0.01~0.10 capacitors (1206, 10uF, 25V types for instance)

[chickenHeadKnob]

Do you consider ST to be a small producer and STM32 at the beginning of the cycle? Maybe I misunderstand something?

Yes I am pretty sure you misunderstood and it is my fault for not giving a better more fulsome explanation. To start with ST is not a small producer and that its size is largely irrelevant to what is happening now. When I refer to cycle I mean the business cycle where production and demand vary over time. On a quasi-periodic basis the electronics industry goes through parts shortages. My guess is that many semi manufactures shuttered or slowed their production 2nd and 3rd quarter of 2020 because of Covid. Both because of social distancing and other crap within the plants and also because they anticipated their customers would also be shutting down or reducing demand. China has apparently come back faster than anticipated and that resulted in a real parts shortage.

Once buyers and sellers detect that a parts shortage is developing then certain psychological effects of individuals operating in their own bubble of knowledge take over and amplify the supply/demand imbalance and make it much worse. A big effect is caused by hoarding. Companies start over buying more parts than they need so they can maintain production, that in turn is noticed by distributors who start jacking up the prices. I need to emphasize there is no Mr. Big-evil orchestrating this; it is simply the end product of individuals acting in their own self interest.

The capacity of supply-management chains to become unstable was noticed a long time ago and is taught in business schools and University through a simulation called "The beer distribution game" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beer_distribution_game

Really all it is, is a way to introduce business management simpletons to the ideas of what engineers would call "control theory". Even if a supply shortage is caused by a Mr Big-evil as blueskull suggests happened with 100nF MLCC's it can still be made worse and wind out of short term control by the actions of many bit players. This is what the beer distribution game simulation teaches.

[S. Petrukhin]

The game is good, but I do not know if this game has smart-ass managers who at one point think: "we have a consumer attachment, demand has strengthened and stopped being elastic - why don't we go into deficit?" This is also taught in universities. And the black power here is one: insatiable greed.

ST is not such a small player, they have a fairly wide range of products under their brand. It seems that the market should regulate, but it does not or is very inert. For me, self-consolation with "normal and ordinary" processes does not suit. So I either switch to GD32, or try to negotiate with the Russian manufacturer (it is obscenely expensive, their processors are designed to survive a nuclear war). I don't want to fall into a pit of scarcity at the production stage. I am the market that throws out unreliable suppliers, only a small one - I don't have the money to run and buy 3k pieces processors and not visible to anyone.