White House tells chip industry to brace for Russian supply disruptions

[hist78]

Here's another potential supply chain disruption.

White House tells chip industry to brace for Russian supply disruptions

The White House is warning the chip industry to diversify its supply chain in case Russia retaliates against threatened U.S. export curbs by blocking access to key materials, people familiar with the matter said. According to Techcet estimates, over 90% of U.S. semiconductor-grade neon supplies...

news.yahoo.com

 

[Daniel Nenni]

Will this be part of the CHIPs Act? Do you think we will spend billions of dollars building neon and palladium sources in the US? Or maybe we can do a better job getting along with our supply chain? For the greater good.......

 

[benb]

The article mentions neon, helium, palladium and other basic materials we have non-Eastern bloc/Russian/substitute materials for.
It doesn’t mention the ones with no realistic alternatives: Nickel and sapphire.
This is typical? Why reveal your hand to an adversary on the eve of war? But still try to communicate “hey everybody, time to start panicking right about now”

 

[Barnsley]

Semicon equivalent of "Blood Diamonds"

 

[hist78]

Will this be part of the CHIPs Act? Do you think we will spend billions of dollars building neon and palladium sources in the US? Or maybe we can do a better job getting along with our supply chain? For the greater good.......

"Or maybe we can do a better job getting along with our supply chain? For the greater good......."

We can hope the best but it's very difficult to please Xi and Putin, two forever "Leader". Communist ideology and the thinking methods rooted in Chairman Xi's CCP and Putin's Russia are more than just profit and supply chain stability.

 

[horscht(i)]

It doesn’t mention the ones with no realistic alternatives: Nickel and sapphire.

Aren`t Indonesia and Philippines the largest producers of Nickel? So we could take Nickel off of the list?

Edit:
Cited from the article: "Neon, critical for the lasers used to make chips, is a biproduct of Russian steel manufacturing, according to Techcet."
Is the article refering to HeNe lasers? There are plenty of diode laser based solutions available.

 

[jms_embedded]

Cited from the article: "Neon, critical for the lasers used to make chips, is a biproduct of Russian steel manufacturing, according to Techcet."
Is the article refering to HeNe lasers? There are plenty of diode laser based solutions available.

the neon thing doesn't make much sense; neon is apparently only available from fractional distillation of air. Last I checked, we have air here... I work less than a mile from an Air Products site, and presumably they bottle up everything they separate, which for one million liters of air at STP (1.2g / L --> approx 1200kg) would yield:

- 906 kg of nitrogen
- 277 kg of oxygen
- 15.5 kg of argon
- 756 g of carbon dioxide
- 15.6 g of neon
- 3.5 g of krypton
- 1.2g of methane
- 0.84 g of helium
- 0.5 g of xenon
- 0.04 g of hydrogen

and a variable amount of water depending on the humidity, and some pollutants depending on where you are.

(see composition by mass: https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/air-composition-d_212.html)

So yeah it's not abundant the way argon is, but there's still a widely available supply of neon.

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenon:

Worldwide production of xenon in 1998 was estimated at 5,000–7,000 m3.[60] Because of its scarcity, xenon is much more expensive than the lighter noble gases—approximate prices for the purchase of small quantities in Europe in 1999 were 10 €/L for xenon, 1 €/L for krypton, and 0.20 €/L for neon,[60] while the much more plentiful argon costs less than a cent per liter. Equivalent costs per kilogram of xenon are calculated by multiplying cost per liter by 174.

 

[jngreenlee]

Will this be part of the CHIPs Act? Do you think we will spend billions of dollars building neon and palladium sources in the US? Or maybe we can do a better job getting along with our supply chain? For the greater good.......

You'd have to think Pat G. is certainly pushing this (FUD) as justification to pass the handouts. Maybe they can bring back cash for clunkers as well, I've got some old stuff to turn in.
Queue an Octogenarian Senator saying "You wouldn't want to drive an old and unsafe unsecure Fiat on the Information Superhighway!"