Chip shortage and high prices threaten supplies of SBCs and other electronics products
A few weeks ago, we started to hear news about a chip shortage for the automotive industry, but the shortage appears to be affecting all sectors now apparently due to a drought in Taiwan where a reservoir could be a risk of being depleted, and TSMC has been asked to reduce its water usage by 7 percent.
I've also started to see several companies in the maker market warn about shortages and price increases. Pine64 announced it would only open pre-order for PinePhone, PinebookPro, PineTab, and other products once they could secure stocks of components, and while they hope to be able to do so within this month, there's no guarantee.
Ameridroid also reported that Hardkernel and another unnamed manufacturer expected really large delays possibly into 2022.
Raspberry Pi least affected?
We asked Raspberry Pi creator and Chief Executive of Raspberry Pi Trading, Eben Upton, to comment on this issue. "We're not expecting any impact from this (or the other factors causing tightness in global supply chains) at present: we're getting great support from our component vendor partners."
Companies like Qualcomm are being affected by several other problems:
We've already seen the global chip shortage hit cars, computers, and consoles. Up next, Qualcomm? A new report from Reuters gathers lots of quotes from the mobile industry that all basically say, "Yep, we're running out of chips."
[...] Qualcomm has to deal with increased demand thanks to the ongoing sanctions against Huawei. Huawei's HiSilicon division was one of Qualcomm's few Android SoC competitors (along with Samsung's Exynos line), and Huawei has long worked to cut all US chips out of its supply chain. The US sanctions against Huawei have made it unable to get a steady supply of chips, and its market share has plummeted (even in China). The companies moving in on Huawei's old turf are all mostly Qualcomm houses that don't have a problem shipping US chips, so demand is up.
Qualcomm's third problem is the weather in Texas. Record cold in February brought down the state's power grid for several days, and one of the many casualties was a Samsung Electronics foundry in Austin. The foundry produces $3.7 billion worth of chips a year and counts Qualcomm and Tesla among its biggest clients. Thanks to the power outage, though, the plant has been down since February 16, and it's forecasted to continue to be down until mid-April. Reuters says it's unclear if this extra problem has impacted smartphone manufacturing yet.
Shipments of our precious 5G smartphones could drop by 30% next quarter due to the outages in Texas.
Previously: Samsung Reportedly Planning $10 Billion Investment to Build "3nm" Fab in Austin, Texas
TSMC Agrees to Produce More Automotive Processors so Taiwan Can Get Vaccines
Silicon Chip Shortage Causes Automakers to Idle Their Factories
Samsung Considers Austin for $17 Billion Chip Plant, Eyes Tax Breaks of at Least $806 Million
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Report: Samsung may build $10 billion advanced chipmaking plant in Austin
Samsung could build a $10 billion advanced logic chipmaking plant in Austin, according to media reports, potentially adding to the company's existing multibillion-dollar facilities in Central Texas.
If it happens, the Samsung expansion would add to a series of recent stunning wins for Austin's technology sector. In just the past six months, Austin saw electric automaker Tesla pick it as the site for a $1 billion assembly facility and software giant Oracle move its corporate headquarters to Austin.
Citing people familiar with the plans, Bloomberg news service reported that Samsung is considering spending more than $10 billion on the plant, which could be Samsung's most advanced yet. The report said that the final investment amount could fluctuate.
[...] According to the Bloomberg report, the new Samsung facility would be potentially capable of fabricating chips as advanced as 3 nanometers. Construction could start as early as this year, with major equipment added in 2022, and operations as early as 2023.
Also at Bloomberg, The Verge, and Notebookcheck.
Related: Washington in Talks with Chipmakers about Building U.S. Factories
TSMC Will Build a $12 Billion "5nm" Fab in Arizona
TSMC's 'Chip-for-Vaccine' Swap To Delay Integrated Circuit Chip Production
Chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) has agreed to manufacture automobile processors at an expedited rate. TSMC's decision comes after governments in several continents requested the Taiwanese authorities to ask the chipmaker to increase this production - as a global shortage of the products start to emerge as a thorn in the side of the economic recovery of many countries that house automobile manufacturers affected by this shortage.
Following the request, Taiwan's Minister of Economic Affairs Ms. Mei-Hua Wang convened a meeting that involved representatives from Germany, TSMC and other semiconductor companies and the dean of Taiwan's Economic Research Institute to discuss the shortage and how Germany and other countries could help Taiwan in return for providing the aforementioned chips.
The meeting took place earlier this week on Wednesday, and a key item on the agenda was how countries including Germany could help the island in return for TSMC agreeing to step up its vehicle chip output. Specifically, the participants stressed on the need for Taiwan to procure vaccinations for the ongoing pandemic and whether nation-states could help the island in this regard.
Following this, the dean of the Taiwan Economic Research Institute stated that he was already in discussions with TSMC and that the chipmaker had agreed to cooperate to provide chips in return for the vaccines. Subsequently, TSMC confirmed on the following day that it would speed up the process for manufacturing automotive chips, with the confirmation coming soon after a second rumored price increase had been reported by The Nikkei Asian Review on Tuesday.
A silicon chip shortage is causing automakers to idle their factories
Automakers canceled orders due to COVID-19, and foundries switched to other customers.
You may have noticed that it's difficult to get ahold of new high-end graphics cards and game consoles these days. In large part, that's due to an ongoing global shortage affecting semiconductor foundries. As it turns out, the problem is even more pronounced in the auto industry. In fact, it's getting so bad that a number of OEMs, including Ford and General Motors, have had to go as far as idling shifts and even entire factories.
Ford had to stop production in Kentucky in December of 2020, and in January, it ordered a month-long pause at a German factory. Stellantis (the new company formed by a merger between Fiat Chrysler and Peugeot) reduced output at factories in the US, Mexico, and Canada around the same time. As did Audi, which had to idle 10,000 employees in Germany, CEO Markus Duesmann said, telling the Financial Times that the problem involved "a very long chain with different supply levels on the components that we are short." Subaru's Gunma factory in Japan has been affected. Production of Toyota's Texas-produced Tundra has, too.
This week, more hits keep coming. Mazda just announced it might have to cut output by 34,000 units this year due to a lack of chips. Nissan's truck factory in Mississippi has reduced its hours. And on Wednesday, GM said it will halt production at factories in Kansas, Canada, Mexico, and South Korea. In many cases, the automakers are trying to prioritize their more in-demand products, but as some of those closures show, that isn't always possible.
Perhaps in the future scientists may discover a way to build automobiles without silicon chips.
Previously: Honda Cuts Car Production on Massive Chip Shortage
TSMC Agrees to Produce More Automotive Processors so Taiwan Can Get Vaccines
Samsung Electronics Co Ltd is considering Austin, Texas, as one of the sites for a new $17 billion chip plant that the South Korean firm said could create 1,800 jobs, according to documents filed with Texas state officials.
The tech giant is seeking combined tax abatements of $805.5 million over 20 years from Travis County and the city of Austin, among other tax breaks, according to the documents.
Samsung said in its filings that if Austin is selected, the company would break ground on the site in the second quarter of this year and that the plant will become operational in the third quarter of 2023.
"This project is highly competitive, and the company is looking at alternative sites in the US including Arizona and New York, as well as abroad in Korea...," Samsung said in the documents, adding that it is taking into account access to talent, chip ecosystem and speed to market in its evaluation of the sites.
[...] TSMC, which counts Apple Inc among its major customers, last year disclosed plans for a $12 billion chip plant in Arizona expected to come online in 2024.
Also at: Austin American-Stateman, Dallas News, CNBC, and Yahoo!.
PINE64 releases a consumer version of the PineTime, its US$26.99 smartwatch
PINE64 has re-released its developer-friendly PineTime smartwatch. This time, PINE64 aims the PineTime at consumers but without hiking the price up. The revised model is pre-built, comes with an OS installed and is IP67 water resistant.
July update: community developers portal
Let me start with really good news for those of you waiting (im)patiently to get their hands on a PineTime: I've just learned that the production of the new batch of PineTime is going well and, if everything goes according to plan, then single sealed PineTime units should be available when this post goes live! These PineTimes are flashed with the latest versions of the bootloader of and InfiniTime, so that you'll be able to get the most out of your watch the moment you receive it.
As we announced last month, the factory was waiting for this release to start the production of the new batch of PineTimes. As a reminder: the ongoing component shortage forced PINE64 to use a slightly different accelerometer for this new batch, since the original one was not available anymore, and InfiniTime needed to add support for this new chip to ensure features like step counting and wake on wrist rotation would work as expected.
Is it eWaste? You decide.
Related: PinePhone Braveheart Linux Smartphone Begins Shipping
Pine64 Unveils Quartz64 (Model A) Single Board Computer
Drought in Taiwan Could Cause Shortages of Single Board Computers and Other Products
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday March 16 2021, @06:01AM
Speaking of value...
I wonder what is the amount of water required to "grow" a cryptocurrency mining-rig card as compared to the amount of water required to grow a cow?
Given the choice between the two... I don't give a fuck about bitcoin mining, just give me the steak please.
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by Frosty Piss on Tuesday March 16 2021, @06:57AM (3 children)
Water is a liquid, it seems likely that if the kind of water they need cannot be refined from seawater in reliable quantities, they can certainly ship it in. The availability of IC’s and such is of sufficient importance that if there does evolve to be a “shortage” due to this issue, it will have certainly been at least partially manufactured to jack up prices.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Tuesday March 16 2021, @07:26AM
I'm sure if they would ship it in, the resulting price would be so high that it couldn't compete even with the shortage.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by driverless on Tuesday March 16 2021, @10:43AM (1 child)
Seems a bit far-fetched, I mean it's not like this stuff will just fall from the sky or something.
(Score: 3, Touché) by maxwell demon on Tuesday March 16 2021, @02:40PM
Yeah, this stuff not falling from the sky is exactly what we call a drought.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 16 2021, @01:34PM
Globalism and demand for the highest efficiency means many products are only produced in one or two regions--sometimes each region only has a single factory making the product! This makes the supply very shaky and easily disturbed. Recall some years ago floods in Thailand and the resulting disk drive shortages that ensued.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Tuesday March 16 2021, @04:47PM (4 children)
I was only inconvenienced by the power outages in Texas in February. The worst I got was the Boil Water Advisory, because the city water system lost pressure thanks to over a hundred leaks caused by the cold. How many of those leaks could have been avoided if there was power for heat, I don't know. Heard the horror stories about electricity customers seeing their monthly bill jump from the vicinity of $200 to over $10000. Didn't happen to me, but the threat is clear. Disappointing, and next election, I'm definitely voting to throw the bums out.
But now, to hear that the power outages are contributing to the chip shortage? All these plans to build "Silicon Prairie" in Austin, Texas, shot down by unreliable power production and delivery? Now I'm angry!
The infamous Houston, Texas based energy company, Enron, was behind a lot of the power problems California had. Turned out, California need not have suffered power shortages and energy price gouging, if Enron had not manipulated the markets. Such problems helped spur the plans to relocate out of Silicon Valley.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 16 2021, @10:34PM (3 children)
Natural gas and coal work just fine in the cold and don't have to shut down if it's too windy and they can generate power 24-7. Embrace the unreliability of green power. It's a trade-off.
(Score: 3, Informative) by optotronic on Wednesday March 17 2021, @02:30AM (1 child)
From what I've read, natural gas and coal had problems during the cold, as did nuclear.
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2021/02/texas-cold-blackout-power-outages-why.html [slate.com]
Part of the problem appears to be that power generation companies were financially motivated to not have enough backup capacity in that they make more money when the supply is low and demand is high.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 17 2021, @07:55AM
There wouldn't have been a capacity problem in the first place if they had properly weatherproofed the generator buildings and substations. Federal law requires such protection but since Texas isn't connected to the interstate power lines they aren't subject to Federal requirements. I'm particularly disturbed by the nuclear plant failure because playing fast and loose with nuclear reactor maintenance is how Fukushima-Daichi went from 'emergency shutdown due to tsunami' to 'Chernobyl grade nuclear meltdown'.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 17 2021, @08:03AM
Contrary to what the Governor was claiming the wind farms were back up and at full capacity within 24 hours. Wind turbines come from the factory with de-icing equipment built into the blades but someone still needs to go out and fill the tanks with de-icing fluid to get them going again. This isn't a problem in colder climates because they keep them filled during the winter, but in places like Texas where it comes up once per decade it is simpler to just keep a few 50 gallon drums handy and only fill the tanks only when needed.