AMD CEO: Global chip shortage severity to ease in H2 2022

[HEXUS]

Dr Su said that manufacturing output planned last year will start to make an impact.

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[LiGhTfasT]

Well its not like they'd dare say otherwise...

[cheesemp]

I'd heard the reason the automotive industry had such supply issues was down to them using old process chip tech and being unwilling to move to newer small chip tech due to the costs involved in redeveloping well tested products. I've no idea how true this is but if it is having more high end chip production won't help the car manufactures. (Supposedly Tesla avoided this as rather than having lots of specialist chips they just use two central Nvidia CPUs in a fail safe failover setup.)

[Tabbykatze]

I'd heard the reason the automotive industry had such supply issues was down to them using old process chip tech and being unwilling to move to newer small chip tech due to the costs involved in redeveloping well tested products. I've no idea how true this is but if it is having more high end chip production won't help the car manufactures. (Supposedly Tesla avoided this as rather than having lots of specialist chips they just use two central Nvidia CPUs in a fail safe failover setup.)

That and the entire automotive industry operates in Just In Time manufacturing mode so that means they have an expectation they can just snap fingers and have the product. Whereas with chip production, it is certainly not a snap finger process and it is also certainly isn't something where you go "TSMC, you're not fulfilling our needs immediately, we're taking our design to Samsung". It takes many many months to retool a design if the comparable node on the alternate supplier is not cross compatible.

So now the automotive industry have had to wake up to the fact that they have painted themselves into a corner and are quite aggressively trying to get out of it.

Edit: it would make me laugh if we had an Audi/Fiat/Ford chip fabrication plant xD

[kompukare]

That and the entire automotive industry operates in Just In Time manufacturing mode so that means they have an expectation they can just snap fingers and have the product. Whereas with chip production, it is certainly not a snap finger process and it is also certainly isn't something where you go "TSMC, you're not fulfilling our needs immediately, we're taking our design to Samsung". It takes many many months to retool a design if the comparable node on the alternate supplier is not cross compatible.

So now the automotive industry have had to wake up to the fact that they have painted themselves into a corner and are quite aggressively trying to get out of it.

Edit: it would make me laugh if we had an Audi/Fiat/Ford chip fabrication plant xD

Bosch recently opened a new one in Dresden, presumably near enough to GF (ex-AMD) plant.

Cheap at round $1 billion but then while it is 300mm it's only 65nm:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...ication_plants

Unsure, but would suspect a lot of that is dedicated to car, power and analogue stuff.

About time someone realised that dogmatic JIT can get really expensive, but instead once again car manufacturers expect government to rescue them from their own incompetence.

[habilain]

About time someone realised that dogmatic JIT can get really expensive, but instead once again car manufacturers expect government to rescue them from their own incompetence.

It's a little bit more complex than that. The automotive supply chain is geared towards minimising waste and storage, because they're expensive on-going costs. Supply-side risks are normally modelled as one-off costs, because normally, they are. What we've hit is a situation where supply-side risks have become ongoing, and that's thrown everything out of whack - not just JIT supply chains. A case in point would be the GPU market.

Incidentally, due to previous experience with earthquakes in Japan, Toyota did have a substantial stockpile going into the current situation. It did buy them about six months or so, but that was it. So I'm not at all clear that there would be any preparations that could have circumvented what's happening now.

[Gentle Viking]

I would believe it if it was Lisa Simpson that said it.

[kompukare]

It's a little bit more complex than that. The automotive supply chain is geared towards minimising waste and storage, because they're expensive on-going costs. Supply-side risks are normally modelled as one-off costs, because normally, they are. What we've hit is a situation where supply-side risks have become ongoing, and that's thrown everything out of whack - not just JIT supply chains. A case in point would be the GPU market.

Incidentally, due to previous experience with earthquakes in Japan, Toyota did have a substantial stockpile going into the current situation. It did buy them about six months or so, but that was it. So I'm not at all clear that there would be any preparations that could have circumvented what's happening now.

Ironic that most companies are so keen on JIT because they are trying dogmatically copy Toyota but Toyota are far more pragmatic and actually do keep a stockpile.

Current pandemic and other issues are of course too long to stockpile for, but my objection to those who blindly follow JIT dogma is that transport costs and energy usage is wasteful and JIT seems to almost assume a $10 per barrel oil price. Transport cost vs speed has a lot to do with the environmental impact as slow but cheap tends to use the least fuel.

Far to little gets transported by sea, barge or train in the UK. HGV is quicker while there were enough drivers, but slower and more efficient would a good thing to aim for.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Ironic that most companies are so keen on JIT because they are trying dogmatically copy Toyota but Toyota are far more pragmatic and actually do keep a stockpile.

Current pandemic and other issues are of course too long to stockpile for, but my objection to those who blindly follow JIT dogma is that transport costs and energy usage is wasteful and JIT seems to almost assume a $10 per barrel oil price. Transport cost vs speed has a lot to do with the environmental impact as slow but cheap tends to use the least fuel.

Far to little gets transported by sea, barge or train in the UK. HGV is quicker while there were enough drivers, but slower and more efficient would a good thing to aim for.

We haven't invested enough in enlarging our ports for years - I have said this a few times on this forum. Just look at the container handling capacity we have compared to Holland,Belgium,Germany,etc. The reason we have such a dependence on HGV drivers from the EU,is because we rely on a lot of re-export of products from EU ports.

[Lordhawkwind]

From what I've read it's the automotive industry's own fault. Once the pandemic hit and countries started to shut down they panicked and cancelled chip orders so as not to get get stuck with huge inventory piles. By the time they realised the shut downs were not dampening demand for cars it was too late. Remember we're talking wafers here not necessarily just chip size. The fabs were able to redistribute their wafer allocation to other buyers and by the time the car industry tried to order again it was too late.

[TriCyclops]

Sure, Lisa. Also, magic real, the world isn't falling apart and the military industrial complex doesn't own most of the planet.

What else?