I keep hearing about the global chip shortage that is affecting auto manufacturers. But there are lots of different chips and I never see anything specific. Custom ASIC ? Memory chips ? cpu ? I would think that manufacturers try to standardize on parts, so I do not understand why there is a shortage.
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Custom chips. They design stuff to their needs and send it off to fab to be made. When COVID hit they thought the market was gonna go way down so they cancelled a lot of orders. Turns out the car market didnt drop as much as they thought, and with their orders cancelled they get moved to the back of the line that’s moving more slowly due to COVID. Facilities before the pandemic were pretty much already at 100% capacity as it was. Now reduce its capabilities where what was 100% would be say an impossible 130% and you start getting backorder.
I work in the industry and just about anything. We don’t really use “custom” chips. Nor do I think most companies design their own chips.
We’ve had communication chips (like can transceivers) go out of stock. Also seen microcontrollers (kinda like mini CPUs) go out of stock. I think we’ve also seen some others go out of stock (I wanna say voltage regulators), but I’m more on the software side. So I can’t tell you exactly.
Yes, all of them, anything you think of as a chip and then some more
Semiconductor factories run at very close to 100% capacity, they have very expensive machines they’re trying to pay off as fast as possible. When COVID hit there were cutbacks in staffing and productivity, then droughts in Taiwan, additional COVID restrictions in various countries with each wave, and now they have a back log of 1 month of parts, but if they were running at 90% capacity to start with they need 9 months to clear that backlog!
This is compounded by an increase in demand for consumer electronics at the same time. Not only is supply of raw materials down but demand of finished goods is up so the supply chain is being pulled from each end.
Your car is going to have multiple processors, probably pretty common ones that used to go for $0.10 but are now $1, it’ll have Flash memory that’s now in high demand, display controllers, transistors, relays, even diodes can be tough to get right now as every company is trying to buy up enough stock to try to clear their backlog to customers but the stock just doesn’t exist so prices just climb skywards
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