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[JEMC]

Captain_Yuri said:

JEMC said:

It's not that simple. The problems that led to this situation were water shortages in Taiwan which (which I don't know if it's been resolved or not) affected TSMC's output, a lot of companies and workers getting new servers/computers to work remotely, crypto mining and smartphones/IoT devices.

Of those, the renewal of server/computers to work remotely has already been done and isn't much of a problem nowadays, something that can be seen given that CPU prices have fallen down to MSRP or lower. The water problems in Taiwan are still a thing, and that affects production. How long will they last? Unknown. Miners are still a plague and smartphones/IoT won't go anywhere.

So, how long will the shortages last? Sadly, no one really knows.

That only really applies to TSMC but Samsung and even Intel are also facing shortages. While Covid might not be the main cause of the water shortages, it does affect TSMC's backup plan which is to get the water shipped to the fabs from elsewhere. Covid is also affecting shipping docks and supply routes so you have shipping containers waiting for extended periods of time with cargo as well as issues with delivery trucks being delayed.

It's true that the watter issue only affects TSMC but, given how big they are in the semiconductor business, the effects are noticed elsewhere. Samsung is still relatively small and Intel has found itself using "old" tech as they took a long time to move past their 14nm process, and neither Samsung nor Intel problems are Covid related, but the result of their own doing.

The container situation is also the result of our own doing, with companies relocating its production facilities in China or south-east Asia for its cheap production costs. The problem is that the route isn't balanced, a lot more containers come from there to North-America and Europe than the other way around, and the result is that, with no one carrying empty containers back to Asia, there's a shortage of them. Yes, Covid accelerated and even made problem more evident, but it didn't create it. It's quite a facepalm situation, if you ask me.

Cargo ports having troubles to keep up with the work is also a result of the previous explanation. Too many things get imported from Asia and the ports have reached a point where they lack room to store more containers, which is why California announced that they'd start issuing fines to the companies that didn't pick their containers within a time period.