"Semiconductor lead times were down four days on average last month. ... On average, lead times still measure in the half-a-year range, at 26.3 weeks."
Not sure that means much. That 2% improvement is down near the noise threshold.
There are a large number of new fabs under construction, but few come onstream before next year. We'll probably have a semiconductor glut by 2024, if China doesn't attack Taiwan.
And that's even assuming the new fabs will produce the chips currently out of stock.
The current exceptional shortages are mostly in legacy nodes, whereas newly constructed fabs will mainly be producing on cutting-edge nodes. Building new fabs for legacy nodes simply isn't economically viable.
The way I've understood it, the expensive part of producing a chip is making the mask set, and the mask set is intimately related to the process producing the chip. That is, you typically can't take a mask set used at one foundry and start producing at another foundry without further ado.
In some cases one can do it[1], but I imagine it requires a fair bit of money to port the mask sets and qualify the new parts. A specific process at a foundry might be sufficiently unique that there's few if any alternative foundries, I believe this was the case for AKM's factory which burned down[2].
If an old part still sells it's often high-volume "jelly bean" stuff, in which case it makes economic sense to let the old machines run as long as they can as they're written off entirely, but not to invest a lot in upgrades. If it's low-volume niche stuff, the price per unit is high, but that means any upgrade cost would drive up prices a lot due to low volume. Thus any customers still hanging on to some old design requiring that part might consider such a price hike a good time to redesign their circuit instead.
Moving to a different node (or even a different fab of the same node) requires significant engineering effort. Meanwhile, we are talking about chips which cost less than a dollar.
Heck, some chips even cost way less. For example, Diodes Incorporated's 74LVC1G06FZ4-7 currently sells for $0.016 in quantities of 10.000. It's an absolutely trivial component logic-wise, so there is nothing to gain by shrinking the die. In fact, due to the current capabilities and ESD tolerance shrinking it would make it worse. Chips like that are never going to move to a different node - they will be produced until the fab breaks down or becomes unprofitable, at which point the chip is discontinued.
This is mixing apples & oranges: The new fabs aren't the latest & greatest tech (e.g. 2-5nm) but they're still going to be producing 25-40nm chips using 300mm wafers which is smaller than most automotive-using chips which are 40-90nm (with the majority still being 90nm).
The real problem though is that 300mm wafer size: A 40nm chip that was made for 200mm wafers still needs to be redesigned for 300mm wafers. It seems like that wouldn't be necessary--you'd think it would just mean you could cram more chips into a bigger space--but it's not so simple. It's not as difficult as designing for a completely new process (e.g. 5nm) but it's still a non-trivial change.
We are seeing shortages of chips initially taped out around 2007/2008 - think the STM32 family or the ATmega32U4. They are using technology from the early 2000s, think 65-90nm. For comparison the RP2040, released in 2020, uses the 40nm node. That's technology which is literally a decade old and it is considered a modern chip!
Meanwhile, TSMC has publicly stated that they are not going to build more 40nm fabs and is actively trying to move customers to 28nm or newer[0]. There isn't any profit in building 40nm fabs anymore, let alone even more legacy ones.
Many of theses newcomers will default in 2024 when prices plummet due to oversupply. We had it all in 1999/2000/2001 when the dot com burst brought retail internet fees drastically down. I think it is comparable.
According to parent the US would not defend Taiwan then because there would be no intensive to do so as the US economy would not longer depend on Taiwanese chip production.
The US policy towards Taiwan is "Strategic Ambiguity" [1]
That means things like having a de-facto embassy but not calling it an embassy. Having a one China policy, and doing a gigantic amount of trade with China, while not agreeing to Beijing's claims of sovereignty over Taiwan. Going 35 years without a phone call between leaders - but selling them tanks, drones and jet fighters. Having a "robust unofficial relationship" whatever that means.
People think the US might not defend Taiwan because the foreign policy of the US is that they might not defend Taiwan.
I would prefer if the US made it unambiguously clear that they're going to defend a country against invasion. In Ukraine we're seeing what ambiguity can lead to.
I agree. This shows the moral sub-optimal position NATO and Western democracies are in after decades worth of invasions and occupations all over the world.
Which the white house immediately walked back. That's happened at least 4 times now so it's definitely a deliberate strategy. A strategy of deliberate ambiguity, one might say.
Which means both Taiwan and China have no idea what to expect. And if China thinks the US won't defend while Taiwan thinks they will, you've got a war on your hands that wouldn't happen if it was unambiguously clear that the US would defend.
This is intentional. If Taiwan knew they could rely 100% on the USA then they wouldn't need to invest in their own defense. This posture puts Taiwan as responsible for their own defense with the US as an insurance policy/economic backstop, in case mainland pulls a rabbit out of a hat.
While the US leaves their view on Taiwan's independence ambiguous, Biden was extremely clear in his answer that the US forces would respond directly to a Chinese invasion of Taiwan.
All wrong, my point is that when there is an opportunity for crooks to make a financial killing by wiping out their main rival in highend semi conductors then the time will be ripe to push for yet another war.
How many wars, how many deaths, how much suffering before we see them for crooks they are.
Idk know how to phrase this in a polite and calm manner. What the heck are our politicians in the eu, us and aligned countries. This pandemic and the war revealed that we are extremely vulnerable both in terms of resources and electronics. Why is there no serious change in how we source both. At least for electronics why arent there plans for massive investments? I understand east europe is orders of magnitude more expensive than asia but if cost is a factor the area is still cheaper than western europe or the us. Or why not invest in semiconductor manufacturing in the us and west eu using modern robotics and processes? Do we enjoy being held for ransom?
“Let me give you a lesson in practical politics.” Senator Burt looked at his wristwatch, leaned back and smiled. “It is a mistake,” he said, “to suppose that the public wants the environment protected or their lives saved and that they will be grateful to any idealist who will fight for such ends. What the public wants is their own individual comfort.
“Now then, young man, don’t ask me to stop the Pumping. The economy and comfort of the entire planet depend on it. Tell me, instead, how to keep the Pumping from exploding the Sun.”
Lamont said, “There is no way, Senator. We are dealing with something here that is so basic, we can’t play with it. We must stop it.”
“Ah, and you can suggest only that we go back to matters as they were before Pumping.”
“We must.”
“In that case, you will need hard and fast proof that you are right.”
“The best proof,” Lamont said stiffly, “is to have the Sun explode.”
Micron and GlobalFoundries are both building new fabs in New York. GF is looking at a new fab in an existing facility at around $1.5 billion. Micron is building a whole new facility for DRAM production, around $100 billion. Micron is also building a $15 billion plant in Idaho.
TI just bought $1.5 billion worth of old fab capacity from Micron, too. In other TI news, they're ramping up production in a new 300mm wafer fab now, with the first wafers coming just last month. They're also building four new fabs at Richardson, Texas.
https://news.ti.com/blog/2022/09/29/tis-new-300-millimeter-w...
Samsung is looking to have a new fab near Austin by late 2023, at about $17 billion.
The US government passed the CHIPS Act that invests government money heavily in securing new domestic semiconductor investment. The state of New York and Onondaga County are investing heavily, too. The county is putting $10 million into Syracuse University and $5 million into its community college for research and education around semiconductors.
Upstate? I'm not sure it's all that more expensive. IBM is in Armonk. Buffalo used to (and may still) have GM warehouses, with many of their cars made not far away in St. Catherines, ON.
I don't think anyone would put a new industrial facility in Kings County.
Until a very short time ago there was a widespread idea belief mutual trade stabilizes relationships in addition to all kind of other nice stuff. Now, that belief has shattered, and it seems to apply only when the participants of the trade have somewhat similar attitudes regarding e.g. democracy. Of course, it takes a while to leave your old loved ideas, but I think that here in the developed countries it would be time to start a real and serious discussion regarding trade policies with countries that are not happy to pursue democratic governance. (Yep, China is the big elephant in this room)
Mutual trade absolutely prevents outright war, as evidenced by the fact that the US rapidly trying to become less reliant on china in case of such a war. It doesn't do anything other than that - it has nothing to do with whether china has a democratic government or not, it has nothing to do with whether or not the countries we trade with make policies favorable to our ideology, it just keeps everyone involved from launching missiles because the rational actors on both sides realize that it would be economic suicide, even if they would win the military engagement.
This was literally the theory that guided European (and particularly German) relations with Russia for the past couple decades. It was disastrously wrong.
Russia knew that the consequence of launching a war would be the evaporation of trade with Europe, and they still did it. They won't attack NATO because it's NATO, with overwhelming nuclear and conventional military forces, it has nothing to do with trade.
That theory also guided the development of the EU, which has arguably been a significant source of peace and stability for the past 70 years, leading to great prosperity. This is only the second war we are seeing on the European continent in all that time. Compared with the previous 70 years it's quite an achievement.
It's a fallacy to focus on the one failure of the policy and ignore the other cases when it was working.
As for NATO its expansion all the way to the borders of Russia didn't prevent the war either, and it remains to be seen whether we won't end up with a war between Russia and NATO.
In times of war it's tempting but dangerous to feel like militarisation of the world is the solution. History doesn't show that to be the case in general.
It's not fallacy to note that the theory has worked between democratic countries remarkably well, but failed between democratic and not so democratic countries. Thus my call to re-evaluate trade relationships with not so democratic countries.
Ok, maybe 'absolutely prevents' should be 'mostly prevents' - the key part is the rational actor bit. If the guy at the steering wheel cares less about the prosperity of his country and his personal wellbeing than he does about fulfilling a czarist power fantasy before he croaks the system is less effective. But I suppose there are very few disincentives to war that would help in that situation.
Well, it did stop Europe from retaliating against Russia with full power, and slowed then down until the actions became extreme.
The mistake is on believing that the effect was symmetric. Russia benefited very little from the trade (yes, for internal reasons), so they made no effort to preserve it.
Indeed, as Erdogan, Orban, and Trump have shown, the path from democracy to autocracy is very short, disturbingly so. What's needed is a treaty organization that promises to invade and restore democracy in the case certain conditions are not met. A sort of inverse Nato if you will.
South Korea, Japan and Taiwan are combined 50%+ of semiconductor production and have wages similar to Western Europe, their factories are already heavily automated and well run. These are not sweatshops with people running around hammering transistors with chisels.
Based on the difficulty that Tesla had with setting up model 3 production, no. What they did it in house is because they had to, there were no supply chains.
I dont think it works that way. Being good at one thing as a country you dont need to neglect others. A country is not a person. The EU, US and allies can simultaneously be good at high tech agriculture, high tech manufacturing, fin tech, space tech, and services. We just need to approach things differently.
In which way should things be approached differently? A country it not one person, but it's still many persons. How do you remain the best in all areas if you don't have the manpower to keep up with the development of knowledge in all areas?
Two things cross my mind. One is that there are millions lacking access to education thus missing all the knowledge needed to grow. If those millions were a country what would that country need to do ensure their growth? Second is that since we lack manpower we either need to look into why is it such an issue having children, despite economic development, or we need to look into even more automation in manufacturing. We need government funded research of the kind that made the atomic bomb or the internet. We also need to look at the economics of it so we dont end up putting more people into poverty because we replaced them with bots.
The west does not, generally speaking, support government industrial policy. That is, neither the US and EU political sphere thinks that guiding industrial activity (setting priorities, etc) is a good use of government power. Instead, our political philosophy is that "the market" is the best mechanism to sort such things out.
This is, of course, a gross generalization with lots of exceptions. Especially in the realm of "defense" technologies. But given this philosophical trust in markets to determine the whos, whats, whens, wheres and hows for industries, they tend to intervene late or weakly even when the public clamors for action.
Also... this philosophy has created the wealthiest societies in the history of humanity. And while past performance is not necessarily indicative of future performance... it's certainly something.
While there's no denying our current wealth as a society, there are enough variables that it's impossible to say that's actually the reason for the prosperity. We could very well just look at the history of war throughout the ages and observe how the victor gets the spoils of conquest prolonged the Roman empire's economy, why would that not also simply true for Pax Americana? The age of prosperity was especially true immediately after WWII and the military industrial complex has been humming along nicely.
The west generated wealthy societies because it constantly transformed itself into something better. With the risk of sounding too pessimistic, right now all i see is a lack of leadership and direction, i see a west increasingly fractured, ridden with debt and populism. At most we are in maintenance mode putting out fires as they come, we are reactive. Even if there is some growth its nowhere near the spectacular growth we saw with the industrial revolution, invention of the internet or the advancement of knowledge in physics and chemistry. Iterating iphones, creating new ubers and facebooks or new programming languages isnt growth. I think we can do better.
Yes, one of the main goals of the world bank and western global economic policy after world war 2 is to create an interconnected world where countries like Germany are dependant on Russia in the hopes that this forces peace talks by making war more costly. The idea is that they are also dependent on us and we can sanction countries like Russia or Iran or North Korea into working with us instead of fighting us.
The issue with this policy is that we need to make the first move in good faith but if countries don't return honestly then our sanctions remove luxury goods like McDonalds while their counter sanctions remove necessities like heating. The second part of the issue is that once sanctions have been applied there no second step and the sanctioned country will just ally itself with other sanctioned countries as a matter of necessity thus pushing them further away from us and closer to all out war.
To protect our selves we need to be self sufficient in these matters which makes the whole thing not work as we will have no leverage other than war.
It's become, at the very least, politically risky to suggest that the tendency of major industries over the past several decades to optimize away everything that doesn't maximize profit could be anything but the Most Holy And True Way, All Hail The Almighty Dollar(/Pound/Euro).
But it's also become painfully clear over the past few years that this tendency is deeply harmful not only to society as a whole, but also to that very industry when any kind of shock to the system occurs, because all redundancy and resiliency to shocks has been optimized away as "wasteful". This includes having more than 1 employee in any given role for far too many companies (see "lean staffing"), which means that if that 1 employee gets COVID, or gets hit by a bus, or quits, or (horror of horrors) even goes on vacation, suddenly there's no one who can do that work at all, and potentially no one who even knows how it's been done.
We desperately need to realign our industries around a) what supports human beings and their needs, b) what ensures continuity of business, and c) what ensures redundancy in the entire system, including the supply chain, so that we can avoid these kinds of utterly foreseeable difficulties. But proposing anything other than what makes the already-wealthy shareholders' currency-denominated high scores go up as much as inhumanly possible is, if it is considered at all, seen as effectively political suicide for anyone not already as openly left-wing as, say, Bernie Sanders.
If we, the people, want this kind of change, we need to signal it by saying so openly, and by voting out the politicians at all levels and in all countries who prioritize business profits over humanity and common sense.
I agree with every point. What i dont understand tho is why is this treated as left wing concept? Investing in a society is as capitalistic as possible. You cant have capitalism without an economically healthy society. Is the plan to keep subsidising corporations by cheap debt? Once a society is impoverished then who will buy all the products made? Aliens? I think for capitalism to function it needs investments in society. This is not a left or right issue, its common sense. Blocking money in the hands of the few is like politburos controlling everything in communism. Money needs to flow and trickle up not down.
Frankly, it's because whatever the theoretical definitions, the actual right wing, at least in America and the UK, has come to stand for short-term profit for the very wealthy over all other considerations (except, perhaps, white supremacy and maintaining the power of right-wing politicians).
But aside from the very small number actively benefiting from this shift, too few people are willing to admit—or even understand—that it has taken place. They're just too invested in the Red vs Blue football game to be willing to do anything but blindly support "Their Side".
To make general electronics (as opposed to semi) supply chain issues worse, we just did a major hit on Chinese semiconductor industry. My impression is that they are not taking it well. Supplying the rest of the world with cheap electronics might not be their highest priority at this point. And it will be hard to produce a price-competitive (obviously US can manufacture anything at high price) alternatives because China has 20-30% (?) lower energy costs and much lower labor and regulatory costs. I guess the idea is to move manufacturing into other Asian countries. But other Asian countries are either China-friendly, or they will have the same higher energy costs as the rest of the world.
>Some chipmakers don't appear to have got the memo and are pushing ahead. Micron, for example, recently announced a $100 billion chip fab destined for New York state.
Yeah, and Intel announced similar for Ohio...and how is that going. A lot different to announce an eventual fab than to actually invest that money next year (which is the TSMC portion of the story).
My mom excitedly told me about a large fab coming to NY recently and I told her it likely was not going to be built then pointed to examples where big tech companies have fucked over communities in the recent past.
I don't believe it's their intention to fuck the community over, but more to try to secure some of that CHIPS money. Intel, TSMC, TI and Samsung actively have fabs being built, but they are slowing them down right now. TSMC is the only one actively saying they are cutting CapEx next year while Intel has actively canceled orders for some of their new fab tools but have not admitted such.
People have short term vision because everything gets reduced to quarterly results now. Changes take time.
Investing now makes sense - not for the next quarter or year - but for the next decade. Is anyone really going to bet the chip market won't be larger in 10 years?
> everything gets reduced to quarterly results now
Yes, it's interesting how we're so short sighted in the west compared to some parts of Asia and Europe.
For example: my friend works for a Japanese company and their roadmap and outlook for success of a new product is 10 years. I was listening to a podcast and they were interviewing a guy from luxury conglomerate LVMH and they think about how today's products will affect their brand in 100 years. That's an extreme example of course, but it's still an interesting perspective to consider.
Is that true now? My understanding is the chip shortage isn't just in high end new chips, but also older chips for use in things like cars and other embedded applications.
I think these domestic fans are heavily subsidized and will go forward anyhow. It takes years to bring an advanced fab online so the state of the market in the next 2-3 years is immaterial.
Can confirm. Just bought 10k units of STM32L4R5ZI, shipping to the assembly house. We didn't procure it direclty, but through our ODM, message from our vendor is that there is a huge dump of semiconductors of all shapes and sizes in Asia. Actually, this is a batch that we bought as insurance due to long leadtimes. Now we will have excess inventory of assembled pcbs but xmas is coming and we could churn through inventory. The market is about to collapse and prices are going to plummet sharply in next 3 months.
I suspect many companies have bought insurance and it is about to bite them in the ass with excess inventory.
That may be true for ST but NXP is still quoting me 60+ weeks for LPC and Kinetis parts. Most of that is targeted to automotive but I don't see a flood of cars coming off the lines either. Where are these parts?
STM32 also seems to be counterfeited more than other lines. Kind of glad I don't have to sift through that right now.
Boom and bust. The industry had a phenomenal last few years and now it's time for adjustment.
Some sectors,like HDD and memory, rely on the annual floods (hehe) to keep stuff from getting cheaper, but not all of them.
I have the money but also tons of patience. No, 2000+ euro for a video card is not a good deal. Even half that is too much. Sadly, I know a good amount of people who fall for the hype and actually do buy overpriced stuff because it's cheaper than a few months ago
Over a decade ago, I bought a brand new Radeon HD3850 for € 130. At the time, it was one of the best GPUs (the HD3870 was faster of course, but still not that expensive). The past couple of years, it's been impossible to get any GPU for anywhere near that kind of price, and the high end costs 10 times as much. It's completely ridiculous. I just refuse to buy for these kind of prices.
This is pretty cool. I hope the 30x0 cards come even more down in price once new AMD cards show up. In other news, did no one noticed USD is now worth more than one EUR? For us in EU this sucks because adding our ~20% vat on top of prices (plus whatever local sellers feel they can get away with) the prices still feel too high for many people.
I worry the trend mentioned in the article doesn't reflect better supply, but lower demand due to incoming recession.
This is exactly what I am talking about. I paid 400 euro for a brand new 1070FE back in 2016 and here you are refuting my statement with a line that you have bought a used 3060 for 250 dollars how many years after release?
I am glad you are happy with your purchase and yet I wouldn't pay that for a new 3060, even if I wanted one
In my original statement I hinted that a 4090 costs well above 2k euro which it does.
I'd say 250 euro would be fair for a brand new 3060 but it costs almost twice as much, according to my brief search on amazon.de
Again, glad you like your card but prices suck across the board and it's not just inflation. Again, I am glad you like your purchase but I say more patience is likely to pay off. What are they going to do, halt all production?
The latest Electronic Design to Delivery Index (EDDI) report for September (available here [1], but behind a free subscription) indicates this as well, with a general increase in component supply. IC's are still low, but have been increasing since the seemingly largest recent dip in supply in May 2021.
It's going to be interesting to see the report for October to see if the trend is continued.
"You get a Raspberry Pi, and you get a Raspberry Pi, and you get a Raspberry Pi, ..."
I am tracking the strike price on eBay, with greater supply the price should edge down towards the market price, looking to see at what point the price will drop down.
Although price is one value, it would be handy to have an idea of the depth of the market at that price, it isn't as though there are thousands listed.
It is possible that scalpers will delay the prices return to normality for a while, by buying large lots where possible, therefore prolonging the scarcity. However, they'll have to sell them earlier than say those bought a couple years ago.
Fingers crossed.
I ordered 4 4GB Pi 4s at $90 a pop in January. They were meant to arrive a few weeks later, but I was a few hours too late to get units from that batch. The next batch would've arrived later this month, but I canceled the order a couple weeks ago. Really hoping I can pick some up for cheaper soon.
We're going from semiconductor shortage to assembly shortage.
The real shortage is energy, and that is why the US HAS the strangle the dollar liquidity.
FIAT money is only worth something if it's backed by scarcity and violence.
It's downhill from here for eternity, I suspect you wont be able to buy anything off the shelf in a couple of months/years.
Which is why you should buy last generations quality hardware now at peak architecture/lithography (14nm Atom, 14nm Xeon 4-core (larger has memory contention and is too power hungry), 28nm Raspberry 4).
This generation and the next is/will be less open/repairable and have higher max TDP which is a problem with unreliable power.
On top of the usual supply/demand dynamic, my impression was that a lot of [clever|greedy|evil] speculators bought up large quantities of many SKU's. If true, and those speculators feel a sudden need to to unwind their positions - things might get interesting++.
If "everyone knows" via the media that there's going to be a toilet paper run on chips and your business depends on shipping product, you'd be a fool not to stock up while there was still stock, instead of going out of business until the nonsense blows over. So I know a small time Ham Radio kit mfgr (its like a one man shop) who STILL has about three years sales volume of Arduino-alike chips in his closet.
Sucks locking up that much money in inventory AND contributing to a toilet-paper run, but for him it beats unemployment, and for me, I can buy and build his kits which is better than not being able to...
In a greater economic policy way, its an inflation-reducer. He has a huge pile of money locked up in his closet in the form of unprogrammed Arduino chips, instead of hyperinflating stuff he could have bought like a better spectrum analyzer or real estate or whatever else.
I bought about five years of my small-scale production back in Dec 2019 (what amounted to full reels of most parts, not because I wanted five years specifically). That was driven initially by MLCC cap supply “weirdness”, but while I was buying, it was dirt cheap (well under $2000) to just buy all the components.
It’s come in handier than I expected for the MCU shortages, but it’s also been really nice to not have to even look at stock/lead times when considering/prototyping new products.
I wouldn't be surprised if keeping 180 days of high-running, common parts on hand becomes the norm for high-margin products.
Very few locations produce chips, but some things like real estate or food production are hyper-local. So in a geopolitical sense of central economic control, the inflation in this anecdote was exported to China and away from local real estate prices or local butcher shop sales of locally produced steaks or whatever else the kit mfgr spends money on that isn't made by a handful of Chinese factories.
The LEAN/Toyota production model had this catastrophic failure built in because it got rid of all slack.
That meant that all buffers we're removed and any interruption caused cascading amplifying consequences.
You get something like a pandemic and the consequences mean that interdependent feedback systems get broken.
You read all these 1990s TPS books that are like "we switched to this system and there's no costs! Everything was better"
This is the fundamental risk tradeoff coming back. It's always there, as reliable as a natural force.
The classic works but like Womack always had that red flag. It's like 300 pages of skimpy on exacting procedural details and zero talk of downside. Everything works as long as 100% of your arbitrary selection of infinite supplies can magically appear on the loading dock perfectly on time (well usually it actually can, except when it can't)
Slack =|= buffer. Slack is, ironically, increasing the likelyhood of those things happeneing. Well managed buffers can mitigate them. Nothing prevents bad decisions from happening and no amount of inventory can save you from a pandemic induced disruption of global supply chains, because nobody has the money to fund those inventories. And even having those funds, it would be much wiser to use them in actively managing your suoply chains instead o just building slack...
Fun fact: Toyota was among the least affected manufacturers, so much for TPS doesn't work.
Second fun fact: When it comes to supply chains everybody not working in SCM seems to know better when somethung goes wrong ehile ignoring all the times stuff just "magically" shows up. This is true for all backbone domains so, from utilities over supply chains all the way to waste removal and the medical profession. The latter less so due to all those drama series.
Well, just like agile, most companies aren't actually implementing TPS but something that looks similar on the surface.
"A Toyota spokesman said one of the goals of its lean inventories strategy was to become sensitive to inefficiencies and risks in supply chains, identify the most potentially damaging bottlenecks and figure out how to avoid them.
“The BCP for us was a classic lean solution,” he said."
The useful question is this: is doing this _stil_ better than holding inventory and preparing? In other words, do these companies still come out ahead despite this one time cost?
On a national level, I think we are seeing policy makers (re)reaching your conclusion, however.
Your message has nothing to do with Toyota as they hve already went back to keeping a strategic supply of inventory just for situations like this a few years back.
Not sure that means much. That 2% improvement is down near the noise threshold. There are a large number of new fabs under construction, but few come onstream before next year. We'll probably have a semiconductor glut by 2024, if China doesn't attack Taiwan.