We actually dumped tons of vaccines on Taiwan particularly to induce them to keep the fabs churning (and to send them here instead of our western "allies."). The vaccines will flow wherever US geopolitical interests lie.
Unfortunately when it comes to these kinds of semiconductor chips, the lead time is just catastrophic when a spike in demand or squeeze in supply happens. It takes months to get a production line up and running, and in excess of a year to build a new factory. Tech companies bet on demand for consumer electronics dropping with a downturn in general economy, and unfortunately that ended up being one of the few sectors that exploded during lockdowns, so they cut orders for chips only a couple months before they'd need more than they ever have, and we're still trying to play catch-up to months of elevated demand. It's going to take a long time for things to equalize again.
We need much more robust industrial policy. All these firms trying to corner markets with IP for proprietary chipsets need to be flayed alive and everyone needs to settle on standardized chips. There's no reason smartphone manufacturers should be designing their own proprietary silicon. There's no reason auto manufacturers should be designing their own proprietary silicon. This shit should be interchangeable.
The desire of fabs to produce the most complex, smallest scale, highest margin chips means that perfectly serviceable 5-10 year old technology gets put on endless backorder and it is fucking everything straight to hell. The market, predictably, will not solve this problem. Particularly as long as semiconductor manufacturing is viewed as a geopolitically strategic industry (as well as one where superprofits are reaped) and productive capacity is limited to the global north.
As usual, This Machine Kills explored this problem in incredible depth (its behind the paywall though :( ).
I don’t see how this type of thing gets remedied
Maybe I am too pessimistic but it seems much more likely to me that things get worse than better
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We actually dumped tons of vaccines on Taiwan particularly to induce them to keep the fabs churning (and to send them here instead of our western "allies."). The vaccines will flow wherever US geopolitical interests lie.
Whoever controls the vax controls the universe
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Unfortunately when it comes to these kinds of semiconductor chips, the lead time is just catastrophic when a spike in demand or squeeze in supply happens. It takes months to get a production line up and running, and in excess of a year to build a new factory. Tech companies bet on demand for consumer electronics dropping with a downturn in general economy, and unfortunately that ended up being one of the few sectors that exploded during lockdowns, so they cut orders for chips only a couple months before they'd need more than they ever have, and we're still trying to play catch-up to months of elevated demand. It's going to take a long time for things to equalize again.
Shit stops selling, it’s not like capacity was exploded in a war
Sure but it’s the interconnectedness and complexity of it all that worries me
We need much more robust industrial policy. All these firms trying to corner markets with IP for proprietary chipsets need to be flayed alive and everyone needs to settle on standardized chips. There's no reason smartphone manufacturers should be designing their own proprietary silicon. There's no reason auto manufacturers should be designing their own proprietary silicon. This shit should be interchangeable.
The desire of fabs to produce the most complex, smallest scale, highest margin chips means that perfectly serviceable 5-10 year old technology gets put on endless backorder and it is fucking everything straight to hell. The market, predictably, will not solve this problem. Particularly as long as semiconductor manufacturing is viewed as a geopolitically strategic industry (as well as one where superprofits are reaped) and productive capacity is limited to the global north.
As usual, This Machine Kills explored this problem in incredible depth (its behind the paywall though :( ).