Arista and Juniper hike prices as component lead times blow out to 80 weeks – that's May 2023

Good luck upgrading your network any time in the next year or two: key vendors Arista and Juniper have both warned they're waiting up to 80 weeks – aka 560 days, taking us to some time in May 2023 – to get their hands on some components. News of those very long lead times came to light in both vendors' recent earnings …

[Pascal Monett]

50 to 80 weeks ?

Haven't the component makers been back to work just like everybody else ?

Or are the component makers also looking at dozens of weeks of lead time ?

Could someone please explain this to me in plain English ?

[Giles C]

Re: 50 to 80 weeks ?

There was a fire at a fab in Japan earlier this year so maybe that has a knock on event with manufacturing. It looks like they were back almost at normal levels by the end of may. But that still left 2 months when they couldn’t produce stuff.

So my guess would be when that happened the people with deep pockets went and offered other chip makers a lot more money to make their designs instead?

Everyone used chips these days, a lightbulb used to be a glass envelope with a wire in it - no in the interests of efficiency it probably has more processing power than an Apollo lander

[wabbit02]

Re: 50 to 80 weeks ?

I think there are a few things to unravel:

1) the supply chain pre-pandemic was pretty optimized. No-one held stock of anything for very long, you knew roughly what your order book was for 6-12 months and planned to meet that

This wasn't just for the end manufactured good (a router in this case), but also components (the copper for a resistor, or the right grade steel sheeting for a case) which would lead into the finished product

2) Demand hasn't dropped, people are still buying in most sectors as if the pandemic didn't happen, we have not seen a contraction of the economies (in general terms)

3) everything from copper mines, to high-end silicon production and end-stage component assembly + all the shipping of bits between them was affected during the pandemic.

4) certain geographies (and therefore supply chains) are still really badly affected.

So: there is a huge pent-up demand which means more product is being required, there was little to no slack in the system, production and supply chains are way out of sync, which means less product is able to be produced and shipped

so longer lead times, and it's not "CPU" it can be any number of components that are an issue.

[Pascal Monett]

In other words : zero stock is now coming back to bite with a vengeance.

[LB45]

Zero and you are a hero

"In other words : zero stock is now coming back to bite with a vengeance."

Sure, it's a shit sandwich, but it's a very LEAN shit sandwich.

Would you like some of our 6SigmaSauce with that?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Zero and you are a hero

Can you really describe it as 'LEAN' if there's no meat at all because meat's backordered for 80 weeks?

[Rob Daglish]

Re: Zero and you are a hero

I reminded of that song Rubber Biscuit:

"Hee, hee, hee, hee the other day you know I had a wish sandwich

Well a wish sandwich is the kind of a sandwich

Where you have two slices of bread and you

Wish you had some meat"