Re:PlayDate Fulfillment Delayed
by CamperBob2 on Thursday November 11, 2021 @03:56PM
(#29193058)
No, there are legitimate shortage issues, and the "Automakers screwed up their forecasts" excuse is starting to wear awfully thin.
Intel FPGAs aren't typically used in cars, for example, yet we're seeing quotes of $500+ on parts that used to cost $50. Lead times? "Don't ask."
If there's a shortage and buyers willing to pay a premium in one segment, it affects all other segments because at least part of manufacturing capacity is interchangeable (with switching costs, but those are bearable if someone wants to pay) and it becomes profitable to randomly shut down production of various niche parts to save some car manufacturers arse, or have essentially a bidding war between those niche parts or car parts in order to discard any customers which aren't willing to pay increased prices.
Re:PlayDate Fulfillment Delayed
by katmannthree on Thursday November 11, 2021 @04:13PM
(#29193250)
Automakers more or less started the shortage, as a result of that everyone is in squirrel mode buying up what they can because they rightly fear having to reengineer and revalidate every single production run. That our new economy has a greater thirst for chips just compounds the issue.
FPGAs are likely short because they are a substitute for SoCs in expensive products.
Everything is sloshing around.
If you want to deliver that part to beat your competitor this year, you will find a substitute.
The auto industry also had unreasonable chip reliability demands - physics doesn't care that they wanted 30-year life while also having 7-10 nm CPU performance - you can NOT HAVE BOTH!
IoT is primarily NOT 7-10 nm performance nodes - AVRs and many ARMs are not at that level - you can get by with larger geometries which can be made on older processes. So not so much shortage issues.