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Intel Businesses Hardware

Intel, Nvidia, TSMC Execs Agree: Chip Shortage Could Last Into 2023 (arstechnica.com) 52

How many years will the ongoing chip shortage affect technology firms across the world? This week, multiple tech executives offered their own dismal estimates as part of their usual public financial disclosures, with the worst one coming in at "a couple of years." From a report: That nasty estimate comes from Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger, who offered that vague timeframe to The Washington Post in an interview on Tuesday. He clarified that was an estimate for how long it would take the company to "build capacity" to potentially address supply shortages. The conversation came as Intel offered to step up for two supply chains particularly pinched by the silicon drought: medical supplies and in-car computer systems.

In previous statements, Gelsinger pointed to Intel's current $20 billion plan to build a pair of factories in Arizona, and this week's interview added praise for President Joe Biden's proposed $50 billion chip-production infrastructure plan -- though Gelsinger indicated that Biden should be ready to spend more than that. TSMC CEO C.C. Wei offered a similarly dire estimate to investors on Thursday, saying that the Taiwan-based company hoped to "offer more capacity" for meeting retail and manufacturing demand "in 2023." TSMC, coincidentally, is moving forward with a manufacturing plant of its own in Arizona, which Bloomberg claims could cost "up to $12 billion," despite the company clarifying that it intends to prioritize research, development, and production in its home nation.

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Intel, Nvidia, TSMC Execs Agree: Chip Shortage Could Last Into 2023

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  • Did the demand skyrocket or what? Where'd this multi-year backlog come from?

    • by Ostracus ( 1354233 ) on Thursday April 15, 2021 @02:28PM (#61278048) Journal

      Shortage of 555 timers for vibrators.

      • Available in astable or monostable multivibrator mode.

      • by subreality ( 157447 ) on Thursday April 15, 2021 @05:46PM (#61278762)

        Shortage of 555 timers for vibrators.

        As somebody who's built several vibrators and other sex toys over the last year, and in contact with others doing the same, I can tell you that's bullshit. We're mostly using ESP32s. :)

      • The 555 timer is really a piece of crap. There is not anything important you can do with it that you can't do better with the cheapest dual opamp like a 1458. However, that means you have to know what you're doing, which is optional with the 555.

    • "He clarified that was an estimate for how long it would take the company to 'build capacity' to potentially address supply shortages." I mean, what is the rush to normalcy when you were selling at commodity prices? You may as well enjoy the sellers' market while you can. I bet Apple is pretty happy about this too.
    • Cellphones.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Thursday April 15, 2021 @02:48PM (#61278122)

        My money is on the plague of frogs that hit the Willamette Valley last year.

      • It's probably all of them.
      • by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

        Yep it's never clear where the problem is covid, droughts, crypto miners, gamers who need 2000 fps, scalpers, locusts... and so on

        The problem isn't the big chips. It's the little jellybean ones that everyone uses but doesn't give a second thought to supply. I mean, normally those things are stocked by the millions so if you need them, anyone can send them to you overnight.

        It's like say, 1K or 10K ohm resistors. Everyone expects to be able to use them anywhere freely - I mean, you don't ever expect the world

        • Why would covid slow down workers in positive pressure clean rooms?
          Politics superseding science?
          Of course I'm basing this on the constant stream of pictures from such manufacturers showing the workers in clean-room 'bunny suits' and wearing face-masks.
          Is that fake?
    • by cb88 ( 1410145 )
      The amount of fab time to make a wafer skyrocketed after 14nm due to more complex processes (quad patterning, or quad patterning + EUV is required for 7-6nm)... but demand is continuing to rise.

      The best place to invest the money in the USA.... would be to pay for Global Foundries to build 7, 5 and 3 NM fabs... Intel has enough money to do whatever they want, TSMC has no intention of building anything state of the art in the USA.
    • JIT Happened (Score:5, Insightful)

      by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Thursday April 15, 2021 @03:33PM (#61278332)
      we've built a supply chain with exactly enough capacity for demand *now*. So if anything goes wrong the whole thing collapses.

      Moreover nobody wants to risk building out to meet demand until they're absolutely 111% positive that demand will be there in a few years, because if you mess up and lose money Wall Street will eat you alive next quarter and you'll have a Vulture Capitalist looking to buy you up to extract anything of value from your corpse for themselves.

      TL;DR; it's a symptom of a deeply dysfunctional economy.
    • Yes demand skyrocketed among other factors. If we are talking about PCs and components, CoVID quarantine meant more people were spending time at home. But now they needed computers that could do video conferencing while doing other work. I would speculate that while people had PCs before CoVID, many of them may have been older and not adequate. Also their PCs may not have been adequate for gaming as entertainment.

      Other factors mean that the supply has been disrupted. Global shipping is still a mess. There w

      • by dgatwood ( 11270 )

        The biggest factor is that the car companies decided to stop buying those chips because people weren't buying cars, and because they stopped buying them, the chip vendors didn't feel the need to keep allocating manufacturing capacity for building them. And when they later decided that they needed parts... whoops! We'll build a new plant to meet your needs. It should be online in a year or two.

        This isn't a shortage caused by excess demand. This is an entirely artificial shortage caused largely by the ab

        • If zero inventory were really that bad there would be a fortune to be made in warehousing and selling components.
          • by dgatwood ( 11270 )

            If zero inventory were really that bad there would be a fortune to be made in warehousing and selling components.

            You're making the mistake of assuming that what's best for consumers is what's best for companies' bottom line. Companies do zero-inventory because otherwise they get stuck with excess inventory that they have to dump at a loss. Consumers benefit from that excess inventory by being able to get what they want in a timely manner, and by being able to purchase the closeout inventory at a cheap price if they don't care about getting the latest and greatest version of a product. But it's hard to make more mon

          • Yes there could be a fortune in warehousing parts of someone had the premonition that a pandemic was about to occur. However that company would have inventory and warehouse costs for years so they could maybe make a fortune in a small window of time. After this pandemic, no one has parts so it would be a very short window. That is not exactly a great strategy as that company would currently have warehousing costs right now. But they would not have inventory costs as they would have no inventory. Also no sal
            • by dgatwood ( 11270 )

              Yes there could be a fortune in warehousing parts of someone had the premonition that a pandemic was about to occur. However that company would have inventory and warehouse costs for years so they could maybe make a fortune in a small window of time.

              The thing is, there are small shortages of things all the time. Most people don't notice it too much, but I've gone for weeks without being able to buy certain food products just because the stores never have them in stock. It's not that there necessarily needs to be one company taking on the burden of huge amounts of warehousing, so much as that there's a need for just a bit more buffering at every level.

              Also, for this specific case, the car companies knew that the downturn was temporary, and that they w

    • apparently...

      Excessive stock piling due to POTUS causing issues with China and compainies like Huewei, trade, use of tech, etc...
      Now everyone wants 3 to 6 months stock, rather than just-in-time.
  • Wow, that sounds like a threat. "What a nice chip industry you have... it'd be a shame if something happened to it..."
  • by xack ( 5304745 ) on Thursday April 15, 2021 @03:08PM (#61278198)
    Mandate that all phone companies wanting to use their chips provide at least five years of updates, and refuse mining asics completely.
  • How long until the hot war over Taiwan takes 1/2 of the worlds capacity offline or destroys it? We could be seriously screwed!
  • by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Thursday April 15, 2021 @03:22PM (#61278266)
    Intel did at $10 billion (with a "b") stock buy back last year with the proceeds from their tax cuts.

    We are going to have to subsidize them because these shortages are a national security problem, but Enough is Enough.

    Raise Corporate Taxes to 50%. Give regulators statutory leeway so they can close loopholes in real time. Hire economists to write the regulations. And *no* Goldman Sachs people. Draw your economists from the Universities. Carefully (they've been packing the Universities too lately)...

    That way the money they're getting in subsidies comes out of their hides like it should.
  • by Anonymous Coward
    What is this? Collusion to jack up the prices?
    • What happens when you share your doubt about this ongoing trend of reports about current and future massive chip shortages due to... drought, virus, famine, erratic markets, extraordinarily bad miscalculations, etc. etc. you get labeled "Troll" either by morons who actually believe all this shit or by corporate shills who are on a mission to sway people's attention from the obvious by the most effective modern tactic: censor / label people "Troll" and if possible ban them. Most popular shit right now is to
  • by Laxator2 ( 973549 ) on Thursday April 15, 2021 @03:31PM (#61278318)

    The same happened about 10 years ago when the floods in Thailand affected hard disk manufacturing.

    https://www.zdnet.com/article/... [zdnet.com]

    • And it is not just the "fab" part for chips either, polysi goes short sometimes. And I wonder if the fabs want to build out quickly, will the Applied's and Nikons... be able to supply the equipment to the new fabs. The simplistic 200 character view that media and politics tries to turn everything into is worthless at describing the problems of today.
  • by williamyf ( 227051 ) on Thursday April 15, 2021 @04:41PM (#61278586)

    As sessame street said.

    Two of those people represent companies that actually MAKE semiconductors, while the third one represent a company which DESIGNS semiconductors, and contract the manufacturing to others...

    Is up to you to decide who to listen to...

  • Perhaps this will encourage people to hold onto existing hardware longer, or seek out second hand hardware?

    I was looking for an RX560 for my 2010 mac pro 5,1 - absolutely nothing available 'new'.
    I paid just under the equivalent new price for a 2nd hand one on eBay - the amount of bidders was insane, so I just jumped in on the 'buy now' price.

    The reality is, for most people, if we take video cards as an example, the 'life span' of a video card tends to be ridiculously short in terms of how long until you buy

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