With computer brains in short supply, President Biden orders 100-day probe into semiconductor drought President Joe Biden signed an executive order on Wednesday to do something about the semiconductor supply-chain woes that have left folks unable to obtain computer parts, system builders unable to ship PCs and game consoles, and automakers unable to manufacture vehicles. As per his instructions, his administration will start …
Which specific chips are used as car ECUs and were switched to Playstation production exactly..... Lays chips?
i.e. you have to give chip makers AMD, Intel and Qualcomm, free money because otherwise car makers cannot buy Intel i9s for their pickup trucks! Or Qualcomm Snapdragons, or Ryzen 5s.... for their Sedans. Except they don't use those chips in their cars, they use application specific ECUs that have f**k all to do with the production of the people asking for the money.
It's corporate socialism. Churches got $10 billion in bailout "loans" last year. Fake loans that don't need to be repaid and now Intel, AMD, Lays and Qualcomm want some free money too.... to help US chip production...
It's going to be mostly (d) all of the above. Apple, Nvidia, AMD, Qualcomm, Broadcom, MediaTek, Xilinx, Intel etc are going to be fighting over TSMC's leading edge and not-quite-so-leading-edge, and similar fabs.
Yes, microcontrollers aren't going to be on 7 or 5nm, they will be on something more chunky, though to me it appears these are either constrained too, to a degree, due to demand - or the things they are going into (cars, etc) are being held up because the control units need the aforementioned Qualcomm, MediaTek, Nvidia, etc chips that are in short supply.
Plus also the stuff mentioned in the article about rare earths and batteries.
In other words, supply chains and manufacturing are complex, with inter-dependencies and knock-on effects.
C.
Intel is of course using its US based fabs for CPUs, with well-documented consequences due to the delayed shift to 10nm and absence of a 7nm capability.
I suspect that the real issue for automotive systems is microcontrollers and chunky ARM processors for infotainment. Intel could be hurting in the sutomotive sector because products of divisions that were bought in (FPGAs, mobileye, AI) are most likely using TSMC.
[the bigger FPGAs are made in Intel's own fabs, but the smaller devices that suit automotive applications are made by TSMC]
I think that the correct response would be for both the EU and the US to negotiate with Intel and/or Global Foundries for the purchase of 45nm, or perhaps 22nm facilities.
I know that AMD/Global Foundries had semiconductor fabs both in Dresden DE, and East Fishkill, NY. Intel's Chandler, AZ site might have an older fab that they might also be willing to sell.
We know that the US NSA has their own fab. An expansion of their management, over a buyout of East Fishkill or Chandler could guarantee 45nm production for the US automobile industry. Europe might feel the same about Dresden.
This is a big enough problem that government(s) could/should address.
Corporate socialism? Nope. It is EXACTLY THE SAME THING CHINA DID TO BUILD THEIR FAB CAPACITY.
But as per usual, the Americans will claim that the Chinese are "evil" for doing so and the Americans are the "white hats" for stepping in to "protect" American businesses from the Chinese.
It is all posturing and word games, with the only winners being the CEO's and directors who profit off the whole project no matter WHOSE government invests.
And in a couple if years there will be a glut. All the new manufacturing capacity will be churning out "chips" so fast that their owners won't be able to give them away. Prices will drop, suppliers will go out of business as the combination of repayments on the machinery continue but profit margins become non-existent.
This happens every few years and is not limited to semiconductors. It looks like 2025 would be a good time to buy that solar power/battery-backed system: when prices have peaked and are down to "fire sale" levels.
Shortages raise prices. High prices mean big profits. Profits attract investment. Investment increases supply. Oversupply leads to a crash in prices. Lack of demand leads to FAB closures. Fewer FABs leads to shortages.
And the pattern repeats Without any of the investors learning from all the times this has happened before.
Read an article yesterday, somewhere in the business press, that because of a drought in Taiwan, TSMC is having to import water from other parts of the island as it's local reservoir has almost dried up. I had no idea that chip production required so much water. Fewer typhoons have been making landfall in Taiwan, which relies on them to fill up the reservoirs. If the rain shortage continues into this year, we might see TSMC having to suspend operations on the island, along with many other factories, in order for the population to have enough drinking water. There could well be a very serious chip drought, with very serious knock on effects to industries all around the world.
I have a feeling that China is going to be watching the weather forecasts for Taiwan with great interest over the next few months.
Quote: President Joe Biden signed an executive order on Wednesday to do something about the semiconductor supply-chain woes....admitting: "I didn’t realize how many billions of chips" were present in today's cars.
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Yup......and many of these chips phoning home to the NSA, FB, Google, <your snoop of choice>......
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Welcome to 1984.
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What about a presidential order about REAL PRIVACY?.........No, I didn't think so!!!
Even a 'normal' car (one that doesn't have wireless connectivity for alerting emergency services investment entire of a crash, remote engine start up for cold mornings etc etc) has a lot of chips and sensors.
In any case, you require a licence to drive a vehicle in most jurisdictions, and the vehicle is usually identifiable via a licence plate. As a society, we generally agree that should you run over a pedestrian then it's a good idea that you be identifiable. The privacy implications of driving a car have been discussed over decades.
Most chips are deep in a landfill due to planned obsolescence from shites like phone manufacturers, Apple and Microsoft.
I am fairly convinced that we wouldn't have a shortage if manufacturers didn't artificially cripple their products. I would love to see the law change here. It is becoming painful to watch people desire defective hardware.
Your choice of examples is curious.
Microsoft, not massive phone vendors. Apple are big phone vendors, but their stuff tends be supported for longer periods than Android devices.
Also, you haven't examined how easily TSMC could up production of, say, AMD GPUs if they suddenly stopped making phone SOCs. You haven't examined how much of TSMC's current capacity is due to past demand for mobile phone chips. You haven't established how many people have bought a new phone because their old one has stopped working, as opposed to them just wanting a new feature.
There's a lot if interrelated factors here, too many to be navigated by hunches.
This pain you're feeling... you might be doing it to yourself.
The poster's main point is, nonetheless, accurate, no matter the details of who is shipping the "planned obsolete" hardware. Bottom line is people are utter and complete MORONS for buying thousand-dollar-plus cell phones that will only be supported for a few short years.
I buy a computer, it is supported as long as I choose to keep buying and paying for software and upgrades for it.
But that isn't good for the "bottom line" of the greedy, who want you to spend that grand every 3-4 years.
Aren't you glad you're only paying about $300/year for your phone hardware ON TOP of your service charges? What a BARGAIN so you can check your twitter feed while out for a walk... *LOL*
"Microsoft, not massive phone vendors"
Windows RT was perhaps the most heinous example of artificially crippling a decent ARM chip. Not only the pointless waste of environmental resources but they also set the industry back by about 5 years because of this. With fools thinking that ARM chips were the issue, rather than Microsoft's criminally locked down platform.
"This pain you're feeling... you might be doing it to yourself."
Not a chance. I haven't bought anything other than ex-business surplus ThinkPads for years. All of them still working. I just wish others weren't so wasteful.
You could even consider this recent behavior to be fairly good evidence that Microsoft is by no means interested in either providing a good solution for their customers, or helping the environment: https://www.theregister.com/2021/02/24/surface_pro_7_plus_ssd/
Supply & Demand
If the phone makers didn't need so many chips the Fab plants wouldn't be built to make them as the demand capacity wouldn't be there.
Imagine if they could make one phone to rule them all and it was standardized and everyone had one and they made lots of spares, why would they keep the factories/fab plants running to make them ?.
I am fairly convinced that much of the innovation in tech is being pushed by the new/better/faster/brighter phone market, innovation that would normally in the past been created by necessity in times of war and is now powered by excessive consumerism.
I'm amused. I'm amused that after all the vitriol that you heaped upon the past administration, Mr. President, that you are finally in agreement with former president Trump concerning on-shoring of critical infrastructure after railing against it for the past 40 years.
Granted, Trump didn't follow through as a lot of us in certain industries had hoped he would, but with all the whiners nipping at his heals and distracting his administration, it's a wonder anything at all was done about the problem.
So let me be clear, on this particular point we agree. All else is still up for grabs.
Trump may have beat the nationalist drum but he made the problem far worse with his focus on trying to cripple Chinese companies rather than focus on trying to improve local capability.
We've all known that rampand offshoring was going to lead to problems -- it was never a matter of 'if' but 'when'. This situation has been brewing up for years and successive waves of offshoring have not only reduced our manufacturing capability but also our ability to ramp up that capability. This left us in a perilous position because we're now dependent on the people we spend all our time attacking. (The Chinese have actually said this directly to the UK government's face -- you can't expect to spend all your time cricizing and destabilizing a society and then expect to trade with them as equals.) Trump's heavy handed "playing to the masses" moves just pushed things over the edge. It not only caused local manufacturers to lose significant business but created an urgent need for them to cut us out of the supply chain permanently. Meanwhile our pundits have focused entirely on the leading edge chips used priamrily in smartphones -- TSMC's forte -- and completely overlooked the commodity parts needed for everything. The result is a shortage, and one I'd guess that the Chinese aren't in a hurry to remedy.
Any fantasies about upping our capabilities over night are just that. We've got to start from the ground up. At least Biden understands this as a problem with competitiveness, not some kind of Cold War zero-sum fight to the death.
Geopolitics aside, distributing fabs around the world would appear sensible to ensue supply to every country. There might be floods here and blackouts there, fires over yonder and an earthquake elsewhere... but hopefully not all at the same time.
After the hard disk shortage a few years back cauusedd by flooding where their manufacture was concentrated, the manufacturers pledged to make their production chains more resilient. A few years laters, when asked how that was going, they said 'Well yeah, we looked at makkunggbthiings more resilient, but we thought it was too expensive".
Resiliency comes at the cost of efficiency. Any company that is not efficient will be undercut by competitors. And likely go out of business. I don't know the answer to this conundrum, but I'm sure it's been studied by economists.
I look forward to the Americans claiming that their government investment in proposed fabs is somehow different than the Chinese government's.
Both insist on backdoors and access for their spies when required for "national security."
Both prop up favored industries financially.
The only difference is the US pretends that the businesses are "independent" because CEOs, executives, and "investors" take the bulk of the money that was supposed to be invested for "managing" the project. :(
...top brass urged the White House to pump cash into building fabs in the United States...
It must be nice to know you're an industry that gets paid by a government to just do your job. Shouldn't demand make it so that fabs pop up themselves? Is there no demand? Are chip manufacturers so f*cking inept that they don't understand basic economics? Then they're non-competitive. They will fail and they deserve to. Is it to keep demand high? Then somebody else should step in and take their place, be a "disruptor". Captialism + caveats, truly the American way.
They underestimated demand. They build cars with a just-in-time-delivery parts system. It literally takes 90 days for raw materials to become chips, it cannot be done any quicker. The car companies screwed up their estimated vehicle production, canceled chip orders, and freed up the chip manufactures to produce other products.
In short, they gave up their place in line, and it bit them in the butt. Not government's problem to solve.
Whilst this is all laudable for the long term, it will do absolutely nothing for the current problem. Maybe if people are building new plants for this they should ensure that they are not in water stressed areas either. That requires some foresight that is usually sadly lacking.
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