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There's almost an "infinite" supply of RP2040 chips:
In a recent episode of Tom's Hardware: The Pi Cast, Raspberry Pi CEO Eben Upton revealed that 10 million RP2040 chips have been made since 2021 and that there could be more Raspberry Pi stores opening in the future.
Tom's Hardware Editor-in-Chief and The Pi Cast co-host Avram Piltch asked Upton "Why are there no shortage of RP2040 based products?" and Upton's answer "We took some big risks" lead to the revelation that Raspberry Pi purchased 500 wafers in 2021.
From a wafer, the yield is approximately 2000 die for 30mm. Newer chips, such as those in the Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W and Raspberry Pi 4 use a 45mm square die, respectively the BCM2710 and BCM2711 packages. From a wafer Raspberry Pi expect to make 1400 die.
Upton then does the math and from 500 wafers, each yielding around 21,000 die, there are around 10 million RP2040 chips.
[...] This "stockpile" of chips from 2021 are what many of us keen Pico users are currently consuming, be it in the form of Raspberry Pi Pico , Pico W or third-party boards. Upton then talks about what is "effectively an infinite supply [of RP2040]" based upon how many die can be created per wafer. This is a refreshing statement, given how global supply chains have been hit by the pandemic.
Related: Raspberry Pi Adds 100,000 Units to Supply Chain, Back to Pre-Pandemic Levels in 2023
(Score: 4, Informative) by Rich on Friday January 13 2023, @02:17PM
When aggregating the article, the word "square" and the size of the 2040 die were lost. From TFA: The RP2040 has 2mm^2 per die, which makes a bit over 20k dies fit on a wafer. The older BCM SoCs had 30mm^2, for about 2k dies per wafer, and the latest generation's die has 45mm^2, and yields 1400 dies/wafer.
The point Upton wanted to make for us to take home: They secured ample supply, even for the peripheral components of the Pico. And unsaid: We're supposed to base our designs on the Pico board, because we're supposed to be certain that there won't be supply chain issues.