Chipmakers face two-year shortage of critical equipment | Financial Times
ASML’s machines are used to etch circuits into silicon wafers. “It is the single most critical company in the semiconductor supply chain,” said Richard Windsor, tech analyst at Radio Free Mobile. “It is the printing press of silicon chips.”
Wennink said ASML was assessing with its suppliers how to increase capacity. It was not yet clear the scale of investment required, he said. ASML has 700 product related suppliers, of which 200 are critical.
I have been reading about the supply constraints (and the geopolitical issues that underpin them). The scale and scope of the problem are beyond comprehension to someone who’s watching it from the fringes. How will this impact the healthcare delivery? Alternatively, will the glut of chip supply (in the future) have any impact on AI modeling and data-driven healthcare? This merits a deeper consideration, as demand forecasting and risk modeling are incredibly complex. Large scale investments usually work in the presence of stable administrative regimes. China is at the “forefront” of these efforts to scale up production locally. 5G (especially splitting), Open RAN, IoT and data driven insights are exciting developments that will impact healthcare delivery in a significant manner.
The US chipmaker is racing to catch up with the industry leader, Taiwan’s TSMC, which is investing more than $100bn over the next three years. Samsung has said it will invest $150bn by the end of the decade to expand production, part of an estimated Won510tn ($421bn) to be invested by more than 150 South Korean companies, according to the government.
The scale of investments to chase the nanometer scale (and cutting edge) is huge. Let’s see how this pans out.
RadOncNotes 