CNBC: Why there's a chip shortage that's hurting everything from the PlayStation 5 to the Chevy Malibu

[jamesd at echeque.com]

On 2021-02-11 10:10, jim bell wrote:
> CNBC: Why there's a chip shortage that's hurting everything from the PlayStation 5 to the Chevy Malibu.
> https://www.cnbc.com/2021/02/10/whats-causing-the-chip-shortage-affecting-ps5-cars-and-more.html
> 



The reason there is a chip shortage is tech failure.  Old fabs in the
west are stopping, and new fabs keep opening, but then the opening is
delayed because working chips just are not coming out of them.

We are massively dependent on Korean and Taiwanese fabs - and the
politically correct explanations of the chip shortage are a reasonable
account provided you just politely ignore the mysterious decline of
western fabs.

China hopes to be able to produce state of the art chips soon.  They
have made a lot of progress in recent years.

Chinese made CPUs still suck - but they are CPUs, they can run Linux and
windows, sort of.  Just kind of slow and ugly.  That is a very large
step forward.  China hopes to end dependence on foreign made chips by
2025.  It is a plausible goal.  They seem to be on track so far.
Meanwhile we become rapidly more dependent on foreign made chips.

At the moment, state of the art is Korean and Taiwanese.