[_red]

I work in hardware design. Almost all ICs are very very limited supply. In our own case we had to move from 512K MCU to 256K simply because lead times are now until Dec 2022 on the 512K version.

I'm really surprised this hasn't bubbled-up to normies yet. I suspect this Christmas is going to be a shocker.

[tux3]

That is both unnecessarily rude, and missing the point the parent post is making.

Companies want to use whatever they can get that's vaguely compatible with the current design. Because it's that or selling nothing for 12 more months.

Sure. But that is not an excuse for misleading the customer. Couldn't find any components wich perform equally well? Then it's a different SKU. Slap a suffix on the name, adjust the price as needed, and don't mix inventory.