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Hardware

Ukraine War Flashes Neon Warning Lights for Chips (reuters.com) 101

Posted by msmash from the aftermath dept.
Russia's invasion of Ukraine by land, air and sea risks reverberating across the global chip industry and exacerbating current supply-chain constraints. Reuters Breakingviews: Ukraine is a major producer of neon gas critical for lasers used in chipmaking and supplies more than 90% of U.S. semiconductor-grade neon, according to estimates from research firm Techcet. About 35% of palladium, a rare metal also used for semiconductors, is sourced from Russia. A full-scale conflict disrupting exports of these elements might hit players like Intel, which gets about 50% of its neon from Eastern Europe, according to JPMorgan. ASML, which supplies machines to semiconductor makers, sources less than 20% of the gases it uses from the crisis-hit countries.
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Ukraine War Flashes Neon Warning Lights for Chips More

Ukraine War Flashes Neon Warning Lights for Chips

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  • Attrition (Score:5, Interesting)

    by backslashdot ( 95548 ) on Thursday February 24, 2022 @01:31PM (#62299767)

    One of the many possible plays for Ukraine, aside from attempts on Putin personally, is a war of attrition against Russian forces. Forcing its economy in a down spiral, which will cause it to sell its palladium and other resources cheap. So long term, in one possible scenario, this could turn out good for the chip industry.

    • An even better scenario is the continuing decline of the Russian population. Depending on which chart you look at, Russia's population will decline anywhere between 5% and 11% by 2050. And that's on top of the deaths it's recording from covid. And now you have to add in the deaths from its invasion of Ukraine and the loss of men of child-bearing age to both death and mutilation.

      While Russia will eventually overwhelm Ukraine through sheer numbers, if Ukraine could kill ~3,000 Russian soldiers the last time

      • You are hoping for some kind of "natural genocid" of Russian people. Disgusting... Which are next on your list? I bet on Chineses people.

        • And what do you think Putin is doing right now? You don't think the Russian troops and the terrorists they're supporting aren't going to torture and kill all the Ukrainian soldiers they capture? How about the mass rapes which will take place when the terrorists are given free reign?

          I only mentioned the decline in the Russian population due to a number of circumstances including male deaths due to alcoholism and suicides. Add in the deaths from the war and Russia's decline will happen that much more quickl

          • Hang on dude. Your really ignoring the demographics and the makeup of the armed forces involved.

            Donbas, and those areas are majority russian population. Those areas do in fact see the Russian troops as their people, and vice versa. I'm a little more concerned about Kyiev (or Kiev, however you wanna spell it), which is demographically very pro western.), and there may well be a more intense local guerilla resistance there.

            But the Russian armed forces like most armed forces are a professional army, and will b

          • And what do you think Putin is doing right now? You don't think the Russian troops and the terrorists they're supporting aren't going to torture and kill all the Ukrainian soldiers they capture? How about the mass rapes which will take place when the terrorists are given free reign?

            You want russian people to disappear because Putin is a dicator?

    • Re:Attrition (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Virtucon ( 127420 ) on Thursday February 24, 2022 @02:19PM (#62299987)

      Putin has been supplying weapons to the separatists for over 8 years now or did we suddenly forget MH17? [go.com]

      This is a long-term strategy as well as diverting attention from his own economic issues. [reuters.com] The whole Crimea takeover situation proved that he has had designs on reclaiming Ukraine. That makes him look strong so expect a new photo release of him sitting shirtless on more horses.

      He's already signed a key gas deal with China before the Olympics in Beijing so he has an outlet for some financial relief on sanctions but he needs to sell oil and gas which oil s now up over $100/bbl [bloomberg.com] on the April contract so high pump prices will be here for a while at least.

      This is a guy who has failed economically at home and only has the oligarchs propping him up. If the west can consolidate sanctions, make them effective, and hold the line he'll probably be forced out of office. I doubt however that Ukraine's military can truly fight a war of attrition, not without a large influx of military support and that will escalate the situation further.

      • Don't worry, last night Biden sent the Ukraine his thoughts and prayers [whitehouse.gov] and promised to talk to other leaders this morning about doing something.

        • Maybe you think we need to once again put our own people in harm's way? Another ten thousand of our people sacrificed to the gods of war? You have no point when you say this. You're trying to do your mic drop, but you're not even attempting to offer a solution. Why? Because you don't have any. What do you expect to have us do? Be f-ing specific. What we are doing is bolstering NATO presence in surrounding countries. We are putting economic sanctions on them, which have already started. We have supplied the

          • Even if nukes are left off the table, we suddenly have started WW3.

            A minor nit-pick... we didn't start this.

          • Well thanks for putting words in my mouth, but no, it's up to Biden to put forward solutions on this and prove that they work, he's the one who put himself out there as someone who could and said he'd restore US soft power, etc.

            Given that Biden is just watching it play out on TV, I'm not exactly convinced. This is looking like the failed withdrawal from Afghanistan again.

          • > What do you expect to have us do?

            I'm neither a lifelong politician nor an expert on foreign relations, but with 10 seconds thought I came up with an approach better than what Biden did.

            Last week, before Putin invaded, Biden announced that the US would not provide any military assistance to defend Ukraine if Putin invaded. Essentially telling Putin "go right ahead and invade any country you want, we aren't going to give you any trouble".

            Here's ONE better approach:
            While Putin is considering whether to i

          • Maybe you think we need to once again put our own people in harm's way? Another ten thousand of our people sacrificed to the gods of war? You have no point when you say this. You're trying to do your mic drop, but you're not even attempting to offer a solution. Why? Because you don't have any. What do you expect to have us do? Be f-ing specific. What we are doing is bolstering NATO presence in surrounding countries. We are putting economic sanctions on them, which have already started. We have supplied the Ukraine with a ton of missiles and ammunition. If we get too involved then we're at war with a major superpower. Even if nukes are left off the table, we suddenly have started WW3. But you think you're being clever with your obvious right-leaning politics. Maybe put Fox news down for a couple seconds and go teach yourself some history and learn what's actually happening in the Ukraine before trying to be so damn clever.

            I can tell you what you should have done. You should either have sent enough NATO army to Ukraine to stop Putin from even thinking about invasion, or if you don't have the cojones for that, you should have bloody well agreed to sign agreement to keep Ukraine out of NATO. Not told them to stand up against Russia, while giving Putin all the assurances he needs that you won't lift a finger if he invades. Threatening "sanctions", my ass. I bet Putin's pants are brown now.

        • Don't worry, last night Biden sent the Ukraine his thoughts and prayers [whitehouse.gov] and promised to talk to other leaders this morning about doing something.

          Considering that Trump most likely would have supported Putin in the invasion, it could be a lot worse.

      • Wow by a sheer coincidence the United States has been arming the Ukraine for the same time period. Fancy that.

        • your point is? We know Putin wants Ukraine, we agreed to help protect it under the 1994 Budapest Accord. Are you saying all Accords shouldn't be honored?

        • Wow by a sheer coincidence the United States has been arming the Ukraine for the same time period. Fancy that.

          Actually, Obama right after first invasion sent Ukraine his thoughts and prayers, and also, immediately embargoed exports of lethal weapons to Ukraine. Trump resumed selling them arms, Bidet stopped again.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Companies are abandoning China for other countries and China is going to have problems in the future to pay for gas from Russia (China is having problem paying for coal)

      • This is a guy who has failed economically at home and only has the oligarchs propping him up.

        Are they still propping him up? No one wants to be this guy next [youtube.com]. It's not clear Putin will get out of this situation without a bullet in his head.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by fermion ( 181285 )
      History, people. The Soviet won the WWII in Europe by attrition. Soviet Union had over 10 million military fatalities, twice as many as anyone else, and maybe 25 million total fatalities. Afghanistan did defeat the Russians, as it did the US. But that was a remote location.

      The theory that we can stuff cheaper by killing is the theory war is based on, and had some validity until the 20th century. The US tried it in Asia through the middle of the 20th century and in the Middle East off and on for decades.

    • "One of the many possible plays for Ukraine, aside from attempts on Putin personally, is a war of attrition against Russian forces."

      In a week, there will be no more Ukraine, no playing.

      I don't get it at all, what if Ukraine joined NATO?

      Why is that a No-no?

      We can see Russia from Sarah Palin's bedroom window, so NATO is at his doorstep since ...forever.

  • Whoever wrote that title must have spent a few hours coming up with it, why can't we just have regular boring titles.

  • impossible to get neon elsewhere (Score:5, Insightful)

    by OrangeTide ( 124937 ) on Thursday February 24, 2022 @01:45PM (#62299845) Homepage Journal

    Actually we buy rare gasses from the Ukraine and Russia because it is cheaper to buy it from Cryoin Engineering and Akela-N than to build a facility to produce it ourselves. These gasses are not an exclusive resource, it's a problem that can be solved with capital investment and time.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by shanen ( 462549 )

      Your Subject is misleading? Seems to be the opposite of your intention, but maybe it's some kind of meta-commentary on what is, after all, pretty much a clickbait story. Or an ironic Subject? In confusion, I'll let it stand (and even though I'm mostly going off on a tangent). Still, yours appears to be the best of the early comments and too bad it isn't FP.

      However the key to your concern is "time", which you mentioned, but softly. But the profits that drive our economy HATE time. They want the money NOW. Wa

      • Your Subject is misleading?

        It sounded funny at the time. sorry. I was trying to show that our assumptions on the seriousness of rare gasses for the chip industry are overblown.

        But the profits that drive our economy HATE time. They want the money NOW.

        More nuanced is that the chip industry puts a lot of money into R&D to bring a design out in 9-18 months. Worst scenario is to get to the end of a design only to find that the economics of manufacturing are no longer favorable. You can sit on the design and wait, which usually means you'll be a generation behind your competitors. Or you can skip onto the ne

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by shanen ( 462549 )

          While I have some money tied up in the stock markets, I would gladly get it out if I could. But keeping the money tied up has become part of the scam, and if I don't play the game by their rules, then they can burn me even worse. (At least I did manage to sell off all my Morgan Stanley stuff last year.)

          Overall I largely agree with you, but not so much on the profits part. That's where things have gotten most out of whack. In conventional AKA old-fashioned companies the profits were small deltas from large v

    • Actually we buy rare gasses from the Ukraine and Russia because it is cheaper to buy it from Cryoin Engineering and Akela-N than to build a facility to produce it ourselves. These gasses are not an exclusive resource, it's a problem that can be solved with capital investment and time.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] tells me the only source of neon is air and specifically "commercially extracted by the fractional distillation of liquid air" it would surprise me if becomes much of a problem.

    • It's literally in the air, albeit at ppm concentrations. Googling around I saw something about the USSR having created these plants because it was a byproduct of steel making for some reason. Unfortunately, Google these days is almost nothing but SEO so the simple phrase search "trace gases in natural gas" was unproductive for me. Is there some way to work the "new" Google that I'm missing, or is it really that bad? Anyway, as others have said we can start up our own Ne production it will just take time

      • 1960s Fontana, California: there was a Linde air liquifaction plant across the highway from Kaiser Steel. My understanding was that they supplied LOX through a cryogenic pipeline to the steel plant. Similar arrangements likely existed elsewhere. I wonder if the issue is something like isotopically purified 22 Ne.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Sb1 ( 930524 )
        Always better to use DuckDuckGo, Startpage or even Bing. Google searches have been horrible for awhile. It’s a good idea to use multiple at times, when you have time, compare the results side by side on a laptop or desktop, it can be staggering.

        • I put in a little more effort after that post and while I did not get an answer to my specific question, I got some links to papers about the isotopic composition of noble gasses in natural gas (but unfortunately, no data regarding the ppm levels of trace gases). Believe it or not, Yahoo was best! That's how far Google has fallen. The quality of results is better on Yahoo now.

          DDG is my default, and I used to flip over to Google for more results, sacrificing the privacy aspect. I found Bing to generally

  • Heh... (Score:3)

    by Nrrqshrr ( 1879148 ) on Thursday February 24, 2022 @01:56PM (#62299899)

    You think the Ukraine invasion is gonna cause chip shortages? Wait to see what happens when China gets funny ideas about Taiwan.
    They're watching the situation in Ukraine with great interest as the NATO answer here might be very similar to the one Taiwan could receive.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by NFN_NLN ( 633283 )

      So chip manufacturer stocks UP or DOWN!?

      Obviously TSMC down because all their plants are dead... but does that drive the existing companies with plants UP in the short term?

    • Chances are much much slimmer as the possible negative outcomes for China are much much slimmer.

      It's a testament to the power of global trade to stop armed conflict. As much animosity there is betwen China and Taiwan their economies are intertwined in many ways. FoxConn, Pegatron, TSMC, Quanta, Compal and several other Taiwanese firms have strong relations and factories on mainland China.

      As much as America enjoys cheap manufacturing in China they just as much, if not more, have economic reliance on contin

    • Yeah. How dare China exert sovereignty over Taiwan. Taiwan belongs to America.

      • Or, Taiwan belongs to itself? You must be the type to ignore it when somebody else is getting abused? Thank goodness you are in the minority, not everyone is like that.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mark-t ( 151149 )

      I don't think NATO is going to be particularly worried about Taiwan, as Taiwan is geographically outside of NATO's jurisdiction.

      But the similarity is undeniable. Putin does not recognize Ukraine's independence, and I don't think China officially recognizes Taiwan as independent of it either. (I was going to say Russia in general does not recognize it, but one of my office coworkers is originally from that region, and she corrected me the last time I had mentioned this when the conversation had shifted

  • If it isn't one thing...it's another. (Score:3)

    by kyoko21 ( 198413 ) on Thursday February 24, 2022 @02:20PM (#62299995)

    As if the global chip shortage wasn't already fun enough, now we can deal with raw materials shortage?

    I guess we just always like to create problems for ourselves because who doesn't like to deal with more problems.

    *sigh*

  • That's why this war will be Russian suicide (Score:5, Insightful)

    by TheNameOfNick ( 7286618 ) on Thursday February 24, 2022 @02:27PM (#62300033)

    Whatever Russia had to offer the world will be replaced from other sources. Oil, gas, neon, whatever. It will all be worthless because today Russia has made itself intolerable. No amount of sweet-talk is going to fix what Putin broke by attacking Ukraine. Russia has exited the market.

    • Russia is is China's new buddy.

    • No amount of sweet-talk is going to fix what Putin broke by attacking Ukraine. Russia has exited the market.

      This is correct, but it already started when the Ukraine people threw out Putins sock puppet in for refusing to sign the association agreement with the EU and Russia annexed Crimea in retaliation (2013-2014). Russian GDP had it's high in 2013, this will be an acceleration of the fall https://www.macrotrends.net/co... [macrotrends.net]

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

      Russia cannot sustain a war. They're hoping for a quick in and out. A prolonged war would deplete what little reserves Russia has left.

      The best thing that can be done would be to declare Ukraine a no-fly zone to keep Russia from bombing it. Russia cannot sustain a much slower ground war.

      Putin wants a "quick win" because that's all Russia can afford, so an air strike will pretty much be all that can be done. Even the Russian people are against war.

      • Russia cannot sustain a war. They're hoping for a quick in and out. A prolonged war would deplete what little reserves Russia has left.

        The best thing that can be done would be to declare Ukraine a no-fly zone to keep Russia from bombing it. Russia cannot sustain a much slower ground war.

        Putin wants a "quick win" because that's all Russia can afford, so an air strike will pretty much be all that can be done. Even the Russian people are against war.

        And pray tell who's gonna enforce it? Bidet didn't even have the cojones to *threaten* war if Putin invades, you think he will have the courage to actually go into it?

      • What nonsense you imagine. What's hard is sustaining a remote war, this is just extension of their territory and they have vastly superior armed forces and can supply without challenge. They can maintain the situation indefinitely of being in the two newly acquired territories and destroying anything that could approach, which is what today's removal of Ukrainian air power and securing route through Chernobyl area was about.

        Russia is getting what they wanted, while all senile ol' Joe can do is repeat "sa

    • And that's why China is doing so poorly right now

    • Ignorant and wrong. Even now Europe continues to receive Russian fossil fuels, their economies would tank without it. The fuels are most fungible thing on Earth, and they can sell to anyone willing to buy, and plenty of countries don't care what the USA and friends think. China, Pakistan, Iran, etc. will gladly be customers.

  • Resources like this is the only reason why the US gives a shit. If it was a poor country with no resources, the US would have even helped Putin.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Umm, no. Pretty sure the only countries the US gives a shit about are those that do have resources.

      Nobody helped Putin more than all those European countries that shut down their nuclear power plants, then needed to import Russian oil.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by drhamad ( 868567 )
      Eh. It's more about their geographical position than specifically about resources. Also history doesn't really back you. Other than the arguable mid east wars (which never saw any real oil profits for the US or allies), most of the US's wars have not really been around resource-rich countries. Vietnam? Korea? Somalia? Yugoslavia (or whatever you want to call it)? The vast majority are about geopolitical maneuvering, not resources.

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