Semi Shortage caused by "The Great Acceleration"

[Arthur Hanson]

As the whole structure of our society and technical structures evolve into a futuristic world advancing at an ever-accelerating rate that I wrote about in my very early posts on this site and termed the "Great Acceleration," we have an unprecedented semi shortage at all levels. Semis now encompass everything from led's, memory, batteries, solar, display processing, memory, in short, just about everything in almost every endeavor. Our society is discovering new uses and applications for all semi/mems technologies at a blistering rate that is only accelerating at an ever-faster rate, literally feeding on itself, creating new demand in areas that didn't even previously exist. This is not only creating a growing demand for semis/mems, but the inputs to the entire ecosystem, from materials to equipment to the people needed at every step of the process. This is a shortage of unprecedented size, scope, and geography to the point it impacts the entire world and just about everything and everyone in it. Semis of all types have literally become the foundation of the information age on which everything is now built or governed. Don't expect demand to wane, expect it to pick up speed. Comments and additions solicited and welcome.

The great chip crisis threatens the promise of Moore’s Law

A shortage of microchips threatens to slow the decades of innovation fueled by the promise of ever faster, cheaper computing power.

www.technologyreview.com

 

[Jumper]

While I believe that the demand will further grow at great speed I don't really think that we will have a crisis of this scope anytime soon. Even as we speak the supply is slowly recovering in many different industries and companies like TSMC and Samsung are spending huge amounts on new factories and equipment. I also want to be transparent here I don't have a firm grasp on the whole chain of suppliers but I suppose they are quickly handling the situation and investing in new equipment and hiring new people to resolve any problems that companies like TSMC, Samsung or Intel might have. There will probably be limited supply of EUV machines, but I hope that new competition will emerge in the market.