Chip Delivery Times Shrink in Sign That Supply Crunch Is Easing (bloomberg.com) 33
Chip delivery times shrank by four days in September, the biggest drop in years, in a sign that the industry's supply crunch is easing. From a report: Lead times -- the gap between when a chip is ordered and when it is delivered -- averaged 26.3 weeks in the period, according to research by Susquehanna Financial Group. That compares with nearly 27 weeks the prior month. Wait times contracted for all key product categories, with power-management and analog chips seeing the biggest declines, Susquehanna analyst Christopher Rolland said in a research note. A global chip shortage bedeviled a wide range of industries in the past year, with automakers and other manufacturers struggling to get enough semiconductors. Pockets of supply constraints remain, but now many chipmakers are concerned about the opposite problem: chip inventory getting too high.
Wow! A whole 2% (Score:3)
Call me when it's big enough that it's distinguishable from noise.
Re:Wow! A whole 2% (Score:4, Informative)
Was going to say the same thing. It's gone from "crap they are saying 2023 for stock" last year, to "oh it's nearly 2023..." now.
Unfortunately a lot of stuff has gone from being due in January 2023 to December 2023, so actually it's pretty much just as far off now.
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Supply or Demand (Score:4, Interesting)
Or maybe there's less demand as the economy stagnates and prices continue to climb.
Nah. (Score:5, Interesting)
No, it just means that supplies that were plundered during the chip shortage are now being restocked regularly. I'm not joking when I write that the entire global supply of specific ICs would evaporate on daily basis and only to show up with outrageous prices from a warehousing company in China. I got bit by this and they wanted $50 for a $3 chip.
Oh, is that all (Score:2, Interesting)
In other words, it's still taking over six months to get a chip to where it's needed.
While covid temporarily but a spanner in the works, it is inconceivable and inexcusable in this day and age to wait over half a year to have a chip produced. We keep hearing so much about how private industry is so efficient, yet here we are.
The excuses will inevitably roll in about lock downs, and infections, and this or that, when the reality is private industry has, and continues, to fail miserably. As we recently saw,
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In other words, it's still taking over six months to get a chip to where it's needed.
While covid temporarily but a spanner in the works, it is inconceivable and inexcusable in this day and age to wait over half a year to have a chip produced. We keep hearing so much about how private industry is so efficient, yet here we are.
The excuses will inevitably roll in about lock downs, and infections, and this or that, when the reality is private industry has, and continues, to fail miserably....
So... do you consider all those fabs in China to really be under the control of private industry? If so, why?
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Because it was no problem 3 years ago and suddenly it is one.
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China decided to pursue zero COVID, and to be fair it's worked well for them. Compared to Europe, they has vastly fewer people dying or getting Long COVID, and their economy took much less of a hit.
Taiwan was pretty similar, put lives and health above making chips for us.
The main reason it sucks so much for us is that we didn't get any of the benefits, but did get the shortages. People in Taiwan seem happier about it.
wow that is a hot take (Score:1)
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Wellllll... any numbers concerning Covid coming out of China is certainly something I'd take with a truckload of salt...
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Interesting that someone thought this was a troll. Some China haters with mod points today?
That they did much better with COVID, far fewer deaths, is just a fact. Same with their economy.
Don't tell me they are lying and hiding millions of deaths and vast economic problems. Look at it this way, if their death rate was anywhere near European countries' then there would have been hundreds of foreigners dying. Can't really hide that from the embassy, or their family in their country of origin. Not to mention th
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That they did much better with COVID, far fewer deaths, is just a fact. Same with their economy.
We can't know how much better.
Don't tell me they are lying and hiding millions of deaths and vast economic problems.
Why not? It would be SOP.
Look at it this way, if their death rate was anywhere near European countries' then there would have been hundreds of foreigners dying.
I propose that it's in the middle somewhere, but that the economic impacts were much higher and they are in fact hiding that with direct manipulation. Whether that was worth it is another discussion.
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You can't hide millions of deaths. Everyone has a smartphone. Satellites are watching China 24/7. Millions of dead would mean mass graves, industrial scale cremation. Millions of families with stories to tell.
They couldn't hide what they were doing to the Uyghurs. We would know, for sure.
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I noticed this (Score:2)
Chip Delivery Times Shrink in Sign That Supply Crunch Is Easing
Walmart has been out of their Kettle-Cooked Jalapeno flavored ones for a while, but was just recently restocked ...
(Pro Tip: They're just as good as the Lay's brand at almost 1/2 the price -- $1.98 vs $3.48 for 8oz bag.)
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You're a jalapeno chip aficonado as well then? I don't care for the lay's as they don't have enough structure, so I don't think I'd like the wally world version either. My favorite now is Tim's. It was Kettle, but they recently made some kind of change and now the texture is terrible.
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I Googled Tim's and now know what to look for so I can try them out -- thanks!
I haven't had them in a while, but seem to remember Miss Vickie's Kettle Chips being good
(or maybe I'm just remembering them fondly as the first I tried...?)
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If you have a chef's store, smart&final or whatever near you, you might try first street, they are not too bad either. Forgot to put that in the first comment :)
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I don't like the Lays much, though. My favorite are the Cape Cod Jalepeno chips. Miss Vicki's second.
Wake me when it becomes noticable (Score:2)
Because so far I neither see more supply nor lower prices. And as long as I don't, don't expect me to care.
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Riiiight, after tripling the price in the past 2 years, it finally came down 5%...
pre-pandemic (Score:3)
How does that compare to pre-pandemic lead times? There is no context here for measuring normal/expected/nominal lead times.
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Pre pandemic lead time could be a few months at worst. Now we’re dealing with 12-16 month lead times.
lead times always depended on volume (Score:2)
The question I have (Score:2)
Another problem has been people making double orders and extending their orders (be
Sorry, not impressed. Certainly not when... (Score:3)
parts I need are over 100 weeks (2+YEARS) out...
Somebody's got some 'splainen to do...
How did "supply chain" issues hit every single chip company, everywhere on the planet, all at the same time? Surely SOMEBODY had another source of, or a stockpile of, whatever supply was the problem. I have yet to hear a single journalist anywhere on the planet corner these chip company execs and ask them how they all became so incompetent simultaneously and globally.
In 2008, when all the big banks were melting down over recklessness, there were plenty of small local banks that were fine, and there was one standout wall st bank (JP Morgan Chase, lead by Jamie Dimon [wikipedia.org]) that was doing so well the government begged it to take TARP funds so the public would not see that the "crisis" could have been avoided if the rest of the industry had behaved as Dimon had. Where is the equivalent semiconductor company???
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Peak sand, bro. This is a big deal and they are trying to hide the extent of the importance until they get a solution worked out. You might be able to make solar panels with inferior silicates but these fancy new processes demand the best, and the best is going to be ever harder to get from here on out. Not only does almost everyone want the latest processes but the chipmakers have been trying to get out of the business of making the older chips. And oh yeah, I almost forgot, guess where the sand comes from [chinadaily.com.cn]
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"Where is the equivalent semiconductor company?"
It's everybody on advanced nodes in fabs not in China (which is redundant since no fab in China is on an advanced node). Any customer that needs to be on a sub 10nm process is willing to pay the fully allocated cost for patterned wafers and therefore the fab is willing to add capacity there. Everyone else was coasting on the spare capacity and paying the marginal costs for production. Once the big players moved to the next node the lesser customers orders exp