
ryanosaur
Audioholic Overlord

AKM Fire Update: Co. Makes Progress, Interim Solution Shows Promise
The AKM fire in Oct. 2020 served to "disrupt the global supply of critical digital ICs." I revisit the AKM story to give you a hopeful update

yup, and don't miss that canceled orders early in the pandemic meant that production was rapidly wound down, then it just isn't possible to ramp back up that quickly even under normal conditions. Then, don't miss that Texas has several big players in the semiconductor field. Just when production was starting to get healthy coming out of the initial COVID wind-down, we had the Ice Storm (SNOVID) that literally crippled the Texas plants for at least 6 weeks (best case scenario, many fabs didn't come back to 100% until much longer). Absolutely these ice storms were the worst disaster that the TX semiconductor fabs have ever faced!Pretty much all manufacturers are trying to ramp capacity. However it literally takes years to build and get a new fab up and running, even for production of existing ICs. Supply chain issues, ironically, are delaying those fabs from coming online in all facets needed to get such a thing off the ground.
Catch22 much? The chips needed to build the equipment to produce more of those chips are what cause the delays in building that equipment.