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Comment by GloriousKoji | Hacker News Reader

> All with Apple's own custom designed chips, even relying on the same chip fabs as those other companies, and still managing to mostly avoid the huge shortages that those others have faced is impressive.

I would not be surprised if the other companies are having shortages because of Apple taking up most of the fab capacity and support engineers.

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>I would not be surprised if the other companies are having shortages because of Apple taking up most of the fab capacity and support engineers.

The whole reason why Apple got the advantage and others dont is merely because Apple is willing put down payment, contract obligation and guarantee over number of years. And their volume will dictate how TSMC plan their capacity. Unless other company are willing to place some sort of bet that they will at least buy x millions on x node within the x years. It is not TSMC's duty to second guess everyone of their customers volume and take the risk of empty Fabs with redundant capacity. Fabs are meant to run at near constant Full Capacity. Most so called Supply Chain expert and professionals are being taught JIT without really understanding the purpose of JIT. I dont like the product and strategy direction of Tim Cook, but he is absolutely a genius in Supply Chain and Operation Management.

Edit: And it just so happens there is a news story on JIT from Toyota https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26151072

And after the Qualcomm and Samsung 4G/5G settlement it seems Qualcomm will try to use Samsung Foundry whenever possible. So it should mean more room at TSMC next year.

Toyota had a lot of trouble after the 2011 earthquake, I'm sure their decision to keep inventory is related to that

Both Apple and Huawei have been stockpiling on silicon wafers for months. The silicon shortage is becoming real.

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