And even then, process nodes aren't fungible. Taping out a design for a totally new (to you) node is probably at least a year of time. And for what? Will the chip shortage be over then anyway?
This is correct. The industry is currently constrained on everything from water to wafers, in addition to fab time slots. Everyone is panic buying too, so shortages are getting amplified.
... and while there is lots of "real" demand we also get the cryptocrazies exerting additional pressure not just on the finest and best silicon available, but now even on HDD/SSDs. Prices have already risen 50+ % in the last few weeks.
Not who you responded to but newly released consoles are tons of chips, having to stay home meant more people buyer gaming PCs as well, everyone who started working from home required tons of new hardware while their desktops at work go unused, and money flowed from governments like water so everyone has money to buy all these things at once. Then on the supply side you had basically everyone stop working for at least a couple months some longer not only out of restrictions on the ability to work but restrictions that make a lot of processes much less efficient plus fear of going to work on top, then you had no one willing to return to many jobs because unemployment benefits have lasted for over a year (rather than normally a few months) and unemployment pays higher than your typical minimum wage job anyways with even the current the extra $300 per week, which was an extra $600 per week for a long time as well. This also means people that used to spend their time on higher wage and producing jobs end up spending a lot of their time doing things they would normally delegate off because no one wants to work those jobs. If you look at chips they are just one of many industries all with shortages for similar reasons, chips are just the worst shortage of all, mainly from all the work from home needs. In 2020 last year my computers power supply died.. there wasn’t one available with 100 miles. I drove to every store within about 20 miles to try to get back online same day. Even online Newegg and Amazon were all sold out, I had to spend about triple normal to by a power supply that was way too much for what I needed and pay extra for shipping it quickly. Not the same as chips but it was a similar need and far fewer people are needing power supplies versus chips.
