[zsellera]

LOL, no. It's hard to implement hardware functions in software if it's impossible to source the MCUs my software stack was built on.

What's really happening is that I (and likely many others) realised that Chinese-brand chips (which are not affected by the shortage) works just as fine as the western ones.

The other thing I realised was that non-authorized sellers works just as fine as well. Yep, I had to implement more thorough testing/QC, but I would not call that extra work innovation.

[emteycz]

Creation of entirely new brands of compatible hardware is innovation too - or maybe let's call it progress.

[intricatedetail]

Co-incidentally you can buy all Western chips you want from Chinese sellers in any quantities. Just that you have to pay 10x.

[zsellera]

My experiences are different.

I think most assembly-houses self-source some parts, and they do it in large quantities (like 1M+ parts/year). As such, they buy at extremely good prices. They overbuy themselves, and in order to get the same good pricing next year, they keep overbuying. Some of their inventory is then sold locally, and ends up in the Shenzhen market or at unauthorized resellers.

For the quantities I buy (sub-1000 pcs typ.) the pricing is usually 0.2-2.0 times the known good parts from known (authorized) sellers.

The problem is that I can not be sure what I get, and I have to implement really extensive testing for each batch.