The chip shortage keeps getting worse – why can't we just make more?

Re:The chip shortage keeps getting worse – why can't we just... by photojosh on Saturday September 04, 2021 @08:41PM (#28420746)

> This is a golden opportunity for the smaller players in the industry. How giants like ST, TI and NXP will deal with this long term - I'm not quite sure. Many companies in 2021 and possibly well into 2022 who would normally design their products with TI parts will not do that because they can't even get samples, let along ramp up production.

I'm currently designing with STM32 parts and bought the last hundred available anywhere in the world, but that's only enough for a field trial, not for production. The only ones left in any quantity at at all are the insanely high pin count BGAs and chip-scale packages... no way.

I looked at TI, NXP and Microchip parts too. There's plenty of older 8-bit microcontrollers available, so if you want an AVR or similar I think you'll be fine because they're on older processes that aren't in as much demand.

If there really is an alternative from a "smaller player", I'm all ears.

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Re:The chip shortage keeps getting worse – why can't we just... by flyinglizard on Sunday September 05, 2021 @03:56AM (#28422373)

MCUs are more of an issue and of course migrating between different families is a huge headache. However the problem extends to other active components too - regulators, interface ICs, sensors, anything really - and there are opportunities to work with the smaller manufacturers there.

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Re:The chip shortage keeps getting worse – why can't we just... by photojosh on Sunday September 05, 2021 @08:39AM (#28423896)

Fair enough, although I'm not sure this is true at our scale or our product type. When designing products for a 20 year industrial product life you really don't want to gamble on chips staying in production.

Definitely shortages on regulators as well, although that's outside my area.

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