August 2021: maker board prices have gone through the roof

[AndrewBCN]

Both MCU and SOC maker board prices seem to have gone through the roof as of August 2021 and that is when you can get them at all! The CEO of STM Jean-Marc Chery has predicted that the disruption in chip supplies could last until mid-2023.
https://www.reuters.com/technology/stmi ... 021-07-29/

[mrburnette]

I am not surprised.

COVID-19 crisis is having world-wide distribution disruptions, manufacturing disruptions, supply-chain issues, and consumer purchasing uncertainties. And there is all of the political posturing making free-trade nearly impossible.

Hobbyists alone simply do not have the economic influence to be a priority driver in the chip recovery phase. Starving chip supplies in automotive and health-care/medical electronics will likely be at the top of the resupply list. Once there are trickle-down surplus, maybe hobby-tronics will stabilize.

[ag123]

for now, i'd skip buying any new mcus etc, & let the autos have their chips
the shortage is really at the mcus, and less so at the top end .e.g. desktop cpus etc.

stm32f103c8 prices are at a record $19 (from lcsc) if you buy a only single piece. almost enough to own a RPi at the old prices, but i think even RPi prices has gone up.
viewtopic.php?f=15&t=1237

i got my Rpi pico from farnell (element14.com), for all i know after i receive my few pieces, i saw no stocks back order only on farnell element14.com !

[AndrewBCN]

And the bad news keep piling up:

World’s Largest Chip Maker to Raise Prices, Threatening Costlier Electronics
TSMC to increase prices of most advanced chips by roughly 10%; less advanced chips will cost about 20% more

https://www.wsj.com/articles/worlds-lar ... 1629978308

[ag123]

'advanced' chips are possibly those =<14nm, so the gpus, amd ryzen cpus, fast arm cortex A and higher etc probably belong there.
'less advanced' part of those are probably the stuff we are playing with now, but the range is very large for 'less advanced' stm32f103 'type' chips possibly isn't even in the 'more advanced' set within 'less advanced', , stm32f4 may be closer there

[dannyf]

World’s Largest Chip Maker to Raise Prices

not just chips: rolex imposed a double-digit price increase and on top of that there is a months-long waiting list,

thanks to covid-induced production reduction and covid-induced stimulus money.