[lin83]

It's difficult to overstate how bad things have been for the past 1.5yrs. Automotive and Industrial microcontrollers and components in particular are impossible to source. I have a friend at one of the big US semiconductor companies. His team exhausted their main competitor's evaluation boards stocks on various sites to strip them for components to populate their own boards (which are hand delivered to selected customers). For non-critical applications they're using grey market Chinese components and even Chinese clones of some of their less complicated parts. Even then it's far from enough.

ASML, who makes some of the most advanced products on earth for semiconductor manufacturing, have apparently purchased washing machines to harvest components. [1]

[1] https://hothardware.com/news/asml-ceo-claims-chip-shortage-f...

[murkt]

> ASML, who makes some of the most advanced products on earth for semiconductor manufacturing, have apparently purchased washing machines to harvest components.

Your link doesn’t support this claim. It says that other companies are doing that, not ASML itself.

[varjag]

1.5 years? The shortages started back in 2016 and are only getting worse. By 2018 it was already positively challenging with new designs.

[rashkov]

Was that the effect of tariffs in 2016?

[varjag]

I don't think any tariffs were even in effect then? But a trade war was already though.