High-purity quartz is used as crucibles in which to melt silicon for semiconductors. It’s not a directly consumed raw material. Based on my understanding of the process, the problem is that a little bit of the crucible dissolves into the silicon every time a batch is melted. How long does a crucible last, and can its life be extended by various forms of cleverness? If the lifetime of a crucible is longer than the time it takes to restore the mines to production, then the interruption might not be serious. Assuming that the mines produce extra-fast for a while, to make up for the gap in production, of course.
IIRC, this sort of interruption to chip supply has happened twice, once with a glue factory fire in Nagoya, and once because of floods in Thailand that simultaneously destroyed several assembly plants. Both interruptions lasted about four months before production was restored, and resulted in a brief price increase instead of the Moore’s Law price decreases that semiconductor prices usually enjoy.
Epistemic status: I was trained as an electrical engineer, and worked for many years as a chip designer, but have not actually been in the business in this century, so any detailed knowledge is possibly obsolete.
High-purity quartz is used as crucibles in which to melt silicon for semiconductors. It’s not a directly consumed raw material. Based on my understanding of the process, the problem is that a little bit of the crucible dissolves into the silicon every time a batch is melted. How long does a crucible last, and can its life be extended by various forms of cleverness? If the lifetime of a crucible is longer than the time it takes to restore the mines to production, then the interruption might not be serious. Assuming that the mines produce extra-fast for a while, to make up for the gap in production, of course.
IIRC, this sort of interruption to chip supply has happened twice, once with a glue factory fire in Nagoya, and once because of floods in Thailand that simultaneously destroyed several assembly plants. Both interruptions lasted about four months before production was restored, and resulted in a brief price increase instead of the Moore’s Law price decreases that semiconductor prices usually enjoy.
Epistemic status: I was trained as an electrical engineer, and worked for many years as a chip designer, but have not actually been in the business in this century, so any detailed knowledge is possibly obsolete.