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by zargon 1561 days ago
It's not TSMC capacity that's the problem. It's the large nodes that make everything except cutting-edge processors. Nobody builds a new large-node fab, but demand for large node components keeps rising.
3 comments

You nailed it. Most chips you use everyday come from the large node fabs. Maybe we should build some more.
lol did that one Renesas fab with the fire make literally every damn semiconductor in the world that wasn't a CPU or GPU?
Sure seems like it. I was hoping to see if anyone knew the root of the problem, but if they do they aren't talking.
A big part of it is increased demand caused by the disruptions themself: a lot of companies are now stocking to have enough to run production for the whole year, while otherwise they'd order just-in-time. That causes further reduced availability, which causes more companies to stock up, repeat ad infinitum.
It's a good theory, but I don't know how to prove it. Of course that's one cause. I'm concerned there are also cascading material shortage problems that have clogged up the system and may be preventing deliveries. I suspect NXP lost their 2022 fab slot for Kinetis micros, but no one is talking. Just delivery dates of late 2023. How many others did that happen to? Why? I am concerned China might be flexing their muscles by shutting down Shenzhen, and maybe they have been flexing their muscles for a year now. I am concerned there is a tipping point that we are close to, where it ALL just falls apart.
I don't have insider information or anything, but I'm convinced that packaging is a huge part of the problem. There are many more wafer fabs than packaging houses, packaging hits high-volume low-margin parts much harder, and everyone routes through the same (lowest cost...) houses in the same tropical low-wage countries because packaging dice is basically a commodity service.

Except that now there isn't enough capacity to go around.

Demand for semiconductors only recently exploded. In 2016, annual growth suddenly tripled for a few years. It's hard to know if this rate of growth is sustainable, or if it will fall back to "normal" again soon.
It was predicted though. There are many roadmaps predicting the increase in use of semiconductor sensors (trillion sensors roadmap) etc.