How The Global Computer Chip Shortage Happened

It’s not an overstatement to say that semiconductors power the modern world. They’re not only a key component of nearly every electronic device we buy and use — they also power the factories that make the electronic devices we buy and use. And now, there aren’t enough of them getting made. Here’s how the global semiconductor chip shortage got so bad, and what’s being done to fix it.

A chip shortage that started as consumers stocked up on personal computers and other electronics during the Covid-19 pandemic now threatens to snarl car production around the world.

GM said that it would extend production cuts in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico until the middle of March. They join a long list of major automakers, including Ford, Honda and Fiat Chrysler, which have warned investors or slowed vehicle production because of the chip shortage.

But it’s not just the automotive industry that’s struggling to get enough semiconductors to build their products. AMD and Qualcomm, which sell chips to most of the top electronics firms, have noted the shortage in recent weeks. Sony blamed the chip shortage for why it’s so hard to get a PlayStation 5 game console.

Chips are likely to remain in short supply in coming months as demand remains higher than ever. The Semiconductor Industry Association said in December that global chip sales would grow 8.4% in 2021 from 2020′s total of $433 billion. That’s up from 5.1% growth between 2019 and 2020 -- a notable jump, given how large the absolute numbers are.

Semiconductors are in short supply because of strong demand for electronics, shifting business models in the semiconductor world that created a bottleneck among outsourced chip factories, and effects from the U.S. trade war with China that started under former President Trump.

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How The Global Computer Chip Shortage Happened

[Alekpowah]

The business news guy needs some semiconductors to improve his audio quality..

[SKCodesForFun]

In the UK they're calling it the global crisp shortage

[cahoutcharles]

Most importantly, I can't get an RTX 3070.
Edit: I got a 3060 for 600$, I'm fine now.

[greenstorm]

I am starting to think cnbc has a fetish for low-quality video interview aesthetics in their videos.

[smittywerbenjagermanjensen]

Tony Stark was able to build this in a cave with a box of scraps

[kent]

"If the software is eating the world, then the chips are the teeth". Good one

[aarliann]

anyone whos into tech can tell you that the covid outbreak has raised prices on everything in the industry.

[CountShasha]

One of those times where I feel very stupid for not buying a 2000 series GPU in a clearance sale and now everything is double the MSRP

[doosh]

I actually worked in the Tesla Fremont plant for a while not too long ago; They had to pause production on a lot of vehicles because of the chip shortage. It was really crazy seeing all the unfinished cars kinda just sitting there, but it really helped with our work at least

[JA-pnji]

I get it Taiwan and S. Korea make chips
China wants to make chips and the US wants ketchup.

[michaelb]

Its always refreshing when one of the speaker's voice sounds like its coming from him on his toilet seat! Makes the video a bit edgier!

[mattdc]

We’ve spent the last 10 years putting computers into toasters, refrigerators, TVs, books, bathtubs, cars; everything we can think of. Wonder if that has anything to do with it.

[IKEMENOsakaman]

Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, and China makes 90% of the world's computer chips. India, China, and Ukraine makes 48% of the world's potato chips.

[Mico]

So outsourcing became a problem to reliability. What a surprise.

[resanpyrice]

Semiconductors are used to make transistors. You dope it with trace amounts of other elements like boron or phosphorus to make p-type and n-type respectively. Then you can make npn or pnp transistors, where the n-type and p-type touch each other, allowing charged particles to move between the different types. For MOSFETs, an insulator is placed on the middle of the junction, and then a conductor, then a voltage is applied to change the charge of the conductor, making it have the same type of charge as the middle part of the junction, repelling similarly charged particles away from the conductor, and allowing charges to flow from one end of the transistor to the other. Then logic gates can be made, then larger circuits, then finite state machines, then you can make a chip that can be programmed or specific to whatever you want to calculate.

[decoderkiller]

I remember you could get 2080 TIs for $400 when the 3000 series was announced...

[fyrman]

The pandemic has exposed many weaknesses in foreign supply chain. Simple things are oddly out of stock... TP, soap, microchip, etc.

[honkytonkinson]

It might have been interesting to add that in the 1950s tech manufacturers in the USA were complacent with their use of the vacuum tube and didn’t adopt the transistor until after the Japanese started having some success with their electronics

[enriqueclarks]

I started to lose interest when they kept repeating "because covid 19, because people stayed at home, because covid 19" it is easy to blame it on a virus rather than other factors...like...oh that's right, companies outsourcing their production to one single factory

[adarshgadekar]

One suggestion... don't put video call recorded by u ... instead tell the person to record the video and send it to u so that it can get clearer