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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
(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/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(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.