Global chip shortage explained by Qualcomm CEO | Cristiano Amon and Lex Fridman

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GUEST BIO:
Cristiano Amon is the CEO of Qualcomm, world-leader in 5G wireless communication and computation systems inside premium Android phones and other robots.

PODCAST INFO:

SOCIAL:

[Mike]

Maybe now is a good time to chill out on the smart appliances. I don’t need my washing machine connected to the internet.

[jdoedoenet]

I used to work in this industry, and we did a lot of business with Qualcomm.
Very clever of this guy - not a single mention of the word "Taiwan" in all that talk of moving semiconductor fab capacity to the US and Europe. (Taiwan and South Korea are currently the two biggest countries producing.)
If (some might say 'when') China makes a move on Taiwan, we're going to see some next level hell break loose! If Taiwan's capacity goes offline in any meaningful way, the current shortfalls/disruptions are going to look like a picnic...

[colmtesticles]

Lex you gotta get someone from ASML on. Their machines are one of the main bottlenecks in the supply chain... And they are some of the most advanced machines ever built!

[pn]

interesting topic, a little more down to earth. The CEO's wiki bio is interesting, he joined Qualcomm age 25, thats cool to see a CEO with a long term background in the company, like back in the old days of HP and Tek and NatSemi.

[r.w.]

Lex, this is the best podcast I've ever come across. Please, continue this good work!

[privacylock]

When the chip shortage first happened, Peugeot was able to switch from the new, digital instrument panel back to the old analogue one.

[stsbmu]

My apologies, to be honest those explanations doesn't make much sense to me. I would guess that it might be highly unusual that such established industry suddenly caught in shortage due to naturally growing demand. Are you sure that no political issues involved in here? I buy chips mostly from China in assembled form as end-product and most of our suppliers say they buy semiconductors from Taiwan initially.

[danieldewilson]

There was also an issue with companies that make goods that need chips not understanding the implications of halting their demand for chips. They didnt understand that it takes along time to retool a chip manufacturing line to produce custom chips so when they went back to their supplier and requested more chips, they had to wait months and months before their supply would be there again.

[zekiyasar]

Semis are not in any rush to fix the supply with the premiums they are charging at the moment

[JS-bkpn]

Does Alex have any other podcasts with any chip companies? People at AMD Nvidia or anything like that?

[Abah-cuh-bus]

“A long term growth of digital”.. sounds like my mom explaining computers. There was also no info on what caused it, no stats…nothing. This explained nothing…

[johnlane]

I listened and I read the comments below - and as usual the crowd always/ultimately sources the truth - not a coincidence that the chip shortage is front line for the incipient economic war between the USA and China(Taiwan) (which failed to fall under the neoliberal order/"wing" for the USA) - and not a coincidence that Huawei restrictions (and arrest of their CFO in Canada per orders from the USA) figure prominent in the timeline of events/shortages - go figure. So, Mr. Amon's reasons are politically correct, and plausibly convenient, but otherwise extraordinarily thin.

[ktpinnacle]

His reasons are all valid, but I can't believe that they weren't expected. And here we are over two years into the pandemic and we're still short on these products. Sounds like the actions of the oil industry reducing the number of refineries in order to tighten supply and maximize profit. And yet we're still subsidizing them with 52 billion. Nice.

[mrplayafication]

imagine the mechanical motors we could build for cars and trucks today with our design and fabrication technology that would not require a single semi conductor to operate.

[redmed]

Isnt it the just in time supply processes that operate in industries and businesses today.

[michaelmontgomery]

The shortage was a result of a microcontroller. No memory shortage. Some high end CPU.

[Kenbomp]

Don't know it's like asking a car dealer why the car is so expensive

[thescouselander]

Sounds like nonsense to me. We keep hearing about how demand has gone up for this and that but sales and supply are down for everything from cars to laptops, consoles phones - you name it. Silicon isn't the only thing in short supply either. The real problem is that globalisation and the associated supply chains have collapsed and a new system is required. That could take a long time to fix.

[zuLess]

its almost as if he has interest in chips being sold

[boblake]

There has been chronic shortages as long as i have been in the business (40 years).