The end of Covid does not mean the end of the chip shortage. That’s what TSMC fears through one of its key executives.
The Covid pandemic was the catalyst for the chip shortage currently plaguing the world, but as we analyzed earlier, the causes are more deep-seated. The hope among experts was that the end of the pandemic with its lockdowns would also solve the chip shortage. That is not realistic, according to Dr. Yuh-Jier Mii, the senior vice president for R&D at TSMC.
In an interview with IEEE, Mii indicates that it will take another two to three years before enough new factories come online to structurally solve the shortage. He makes that assessment personally and thus not on behalf of TSMC, though his opinion weighs in. After all, Mii is in charge of his company’s latest manufacturing codes and thus has detailed insight into the industry.
Accelerated growth
According to Mii, the industry missed signals of growing demand. Those signals were there even without Covid. He does expect that all major players have learned lessons from the current situation so that such a problem will not occur in this way in the future.
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“Right now the industry is investing a huge amount of capital in building new capacity to solve the chip shortage,” said Mii. “We have a much clearer picture of future demand today than we did two years ago.
All major players including TSMC but also Intel are currently working diligently to increase capacity. Intel plans to set up a large new plant for its most advanced chips in Germany. Pat Gelsinger, CEO of Intel, partly shares Mii’s opinion. He previously let slip that the chip shortage will last at least until 2023.