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by totalZero 1886 days ago
It's convenient to blame automakers for what's happening in the semiconductor market right now, but I think it's an oversimplification. They're not the only ones affected by shortages, and about a year has passed since the rebound in new auto sales. The reality is that we need more semiconductor fabs because the shape of the market has changed. It's not just a perturbation from the auto sector. It's demand creation.
2 comments
genmud 1886 days ago
Those are separate issues. It is convenient to blame automakers for the chip shortages because they are 100% at fault here for their stupidity with the automotive rated semiconductor segment.

Additionally, their lack of planning and foresight contributed to the larger semiconductor industry going into a panic, causing a purchasing frenzy that dried up all the channels.

People in the larger industry saw what happened with the automotive semiconductor segment and went, well... maybe I should just keep 1 year of all my critical ICs on hand just to be safe.

I agree with you that we need more fabs, but they need to be thought of as (from a US centric viewpoint) national security assets. The reality is that if we want significant infrastructure, we need to do major investment from the US Government to ensure they are built here in the US. There are either production minimum guarantees, subsidies on the construction or operational costs to basically cover the costs of having excess capacity.

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cptskippy 1886 days ago
> They're not the only ones affected by shortages

I think it's also disingenuous to continue to refer to increased demand as shortages because the implication is that there was a shortfall in production. The reality is that there was an increase in demand and limited capacity.

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totalZero 1886 days ago
I think "shortage" means "scarcity," while "shortfall" means "deficit." Just because you have a shortage doesn't mean you have a shortfall whereby suppliers somehow failed. Of course, there have also been shortfalls....when a plant catches fire or production gets delayed due to power outages, that results in a shortfall.

Overall I'd say you're right. Capacity has so much inertia that it lags beyond the created demand. That isn't the fault of the foundries, it's just an artifact of unpredictable market behavior.

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