[reportingsjr]

Most of the chips in these shortages are being produced on either older process nodes, or on slightly specialized nodes. The typical micro that's been hit by this is using anywhere from a 28nm to 180nm node.

The trouble is, this is a temporary shortage, so it makes no sense to spend serious cash (you're talking hundreds of millions) to make a new fab when the demand won't be there in a year or two.

[baybal2]

> The trouble is, this is a temporary shortage

It isn't. Designs on 200mm were in dire shortage for half a decade, and Chinese foundries were making very decent money on decades old chips.

For the last 3-4 years, 200mm-180nm had a 12 month+ backlog across the whole market.

[pharke]

I wonder if there's a good business in the mix of these ideas. If a lot of manufacturers actually are using over powered chips because they are a) more available and b) easier to program with newer tooling then one might be able to find a niche making cheaper/simpler/older style chips if they also provided modern tooling making it easier to program them for simple tasks like weighing things, blinking lights, playing little tunes, reading a sensor, etc. I've heard good things about PlatformIO so leveraging that ecosystem could be a win as far as avoiding creating your own IDE. Producing great documentation for the products would also go a long way towards gaining adoption.

[baybal2]

No the challenge is exactly the opposite.

Tons of chips still made at >130nm, and 200mm equipment for simple reasons that companies don't make much money, or not having much volume in this stuff.

[anonymouse008]

> The trouble is, this is a temporary shortage, so it makes no sense to spend serious cash (you're talking hundreds of millions) to make a new fab when the demand won't be there in a year or two.

While true, one could say it’s a bet on inflation to borrow dollars now for productive assets.