@Anton , maybe ask AMD and Nvidia if they'll be able to supply the markets with their upcoming products or if they'll be another shortage like has recently happened for about 1 and 1/2 years?
Rising costs are forcing lots of people to focus their buying power on survival-level essentials. Kinda hard to worry about buying the next Samsung Galaxy Fold when you're being squeezed to pay for utilities, food, transportation, and living space.
That glut of Samsung smartphones is actually mid-range models, not flagship models like the Galaxy Fold. I would post a link but it wouldn't show up in this chat The upper-income people are still buying high-end smartphones as normal; it's the middle and lower income people that are deferring their normal upgrade cycle to save money. Since decline in demand is for mid-range phones, it likely wouldn't save much capacity on the leading-edge nodes.
Well we ARE buying fewer smartphones, I saw shipments fell by something like 9% last quarter. Though I just saw an article with research from China showing smartphone shipments, especially iPhones, really picked up in China in June when the lockdowns started ending. So I guess it remains to be seen whether that 9% drop is sustained or just a blip.
surprise, surprise. too bad that most civilians are ignorant of The Tyranny of Average Cost. to wit: the more capital used in producing a widget (the BoM), the less opportunity there is to shrink output and still make money, since materials and, esp. labour, make up an increasingly small % of said BoM. with a high capital intensive production process, producing balls-out 24/7/365 is the only way to make a profit: smear all that capital cost across the most pieces. given that Real 5G is a waste of time, due to the physics of it all (have you looked at the kludge that is Verizon 5G Home? gad), and low frequency (even C-Band) 5G isn't a huge improvement, performance isn't a pressure to buy New.
that leaves adding New Capability. how's that going? eh?
The shortage of automotive chips are for legacy nodes, not leading edge. The chips cannot simply be produced on a different node, it takes time and costs money to redesign the chips and many of those chips are too cheap to be worth the investment.
Except it doesn't work like that. Smartphone chips are produced on leading-edge nodes, and chips used in a car don't compete for the same fab capacity...........
We know that ASML is the only supplier for EUV scanners, but I thought Nikon and Canon both supplied immersion lithography kit; I see Canon hasn't got an argon-fluoride range (using 193nm light rather than the 248nm of their krypton-fluoride range)
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ballsystemlord - Thursday, July 21, 2022 - link
@Anton , maybe ask AMD and Nvidia if they'll be able to supply the markets with their upcoming products or if they'll be another shortage like has recently happened for about 1 and 1/2 years?IBM760XL - Thursday, July 21, 2022 - link
What amazes me is that 38% of TSMC's revenue comes from smartphones, and that's *less* than what it used to be.If we all bought 20% fewer smartphones, that automotive chip shortage could be solved tomorrow.
Kidding, I know it isn't transferable like that, but that's a lot of chips tied up in making phones.
meacupla - Friday, July 22, 2022 - link
The interesting part is, Samsung is sitting on a ton of smartphones they couldn't sell.PeachNCream - Monday, July 25, 2022 - link
Rising costs are forcing lots of people to focus their buying power on survival-level essentials. Kinda hard to worry about buying the next Samsung Galaxy Fold when you're being squeezed to pay for utilities, food, transportation, and living space.The Von Matrices - Thursday, August 11, 2022 - link
That glut of Samsung smartphones is actually mid-range models, not flagship models like the Galaxy Fold. I would post a link but it wouldn't show up in this chat The upper-income people are still buying high-end smartphones as normal; it's the middle and lower income people that are deferring their normal upgrade cycle to save money. Since decline in demand is for mid-range phones, it likely wouldn't save much capacity on the leading-edge nodes.Zoolook - Sunday, August 14, 2022 - link
Most automotive chips aren't produced on leading edge processes and that's not where the biggest crunch is, even if PC builders might think so.Doug_S - Friday, July 22, 2022 - link
Well we ARE buying fewer smartphones, I saw shipments fell by something like 9% last quarter. Though I just saw an article with research from China showing smartphone shipments, especially iPhones, really picked up in China in June when the lockdowns started ending. So I guess it remains to be seen whether that 9% drop is sustained or just a blip.FunBunny2 - Sunday, July 24, 2022 - link
"Well we ARE buying fewer smartphones, "surprise, surprise. too bad that most civilians are ignorant of The Tyranny of Average Cost. to wit: the more capital used in producing a widget (the BoM), the less opportunity there is to shrink output and still make money, since materials and, esp. labour, make up an increasingly small % of said BoM. with a high capital intensive production process, producing balls-out 24/7/365 is the only way to make a profit: smear all that capital cost across the most pieces. given that Real 5G is a waste of time, due to the physics of it all (have you looked at the kludge that is Verizon 5G Home? gad), and low frequency (even C-Band) 5G isn't a huge improvement, performance isn't a pressure to buy New.
that leaves adding New Capability. how's that going? eh?
Minthos - Thursday, August 11, 2022 - link
The shortage of automotive chips are for legacy nodes, not leading edge. The chips cannot simply be produced on a different node, it takes time and costs money to redesign the chips and many of those chips are too cheap to be worth the investment.mattbe - Friday, August 12, 2022 - link
Except it doesn't work like that. Smartphone chips are produced on leading-edge nodes, and chips used in a car don't compete for the same fab capacity...........TomWomack - Monday, July 25, 2022 - link
We know that ASML is the only supplier for EUV scanners, but I thought Nikon and Canon both supplied immersion lithography kit; I see Canon hasn't got an argon-fluoride range (using 193nm light rather than the 248nm of their krypton-fluoride range)ronald245 - Tuesday, August 9, 2022 - link
Note on the wet/dry litho, EUV ASML machines operate in a vacuum, and don´t use the water bubble to manipulate NA