Screaming Circuits is seeing more and more components in short supply or on allocation these days. A while back, we took a survey of our customers and found that on average, an engineer would spend about 16 hours sourcing parts for a prototype design.
Schottky top My question is has that changed? There are a few chip companies with a lot of parts in short supply, but what I hear the most about is the passive components. If you’ve designed a very specific power or radio chip, for example, I can see how a twelve week lead time can be a very big issue. But if it’s just a 47pf, 6V cap, a resistor or diode, is it really that difficult to find a sub quickly?
How much of an issue is parts availability today — really? Is it something that has a lot of visibility and little impact? Or is it something where the visibility and the impact are both pretty big? How much of a hassle and time sink is it for you now?
Duane Benson
I’ll trade you a pair of .022 for one .047
in the past .. only Maxim would make an engineer’s eyes roll – when talking about delivery.
last 2 months.. Texas Inst… has developed a lead time issue with a large percentage of it’s parts… (told they had major shutdown/shift in their testing services I am told)…
Created a really good quarterly result for their stock holders (because of major layoffs) .. but with up turn in business are far behind in building back up their inventories (lost a large number of experienced people during layoffs).
I am hearing large CMs ( Foxconn) are having problems with suppliers – across the board (lead time)…. from a different source.
all pointing to creating additional problems with secondary (grey) market sources.. providing bogus parts into the supply chain.
Yes .. all this means a lot more research for engineers in selection of parts for anything to be built in near term.
Ditto on the TI parts. I can find the TI parts I need all over Asia, Tiawan, Malaysia, etc. but NOTHING on US soil or Europe. Why? Interesting.
Try looking for a TAS1020BPFB (stereo audio uController) – 3 months lead time!
What’s up TI?