Incoming CEO Cristiano Amon rejects the notion Qualcomm is “more acutely impacted” by the chip shortage than others in the space, he told JPMorgan’s virtual conference Wednesday. Spiking demand from many end-market sectors is so pervasive that few, if any, chipmakers are able to keep up, he said: “In the current environment, if you're a semiconductor company and you don't have more demand than supply, you should be worried.” Qualcomm is navigating the crisis through “capacity-planning actions with our foundries, and we expect to see material improvements towards the end of the year,” he said. The company is a firm believer that 5G will require millimeter wave to reach its “full potential,” said Amon. Every global 5G market “eventually” will have mmWave, he said. “It's just a question of time.”

The semiconductor industry typically goes through “cycles” of supply and demand imbalance, “but this one is different,” Advanced Micro Devices CEO Lisa Su told a J.P. Morgan virtual conference Monday. “The difference is you see every segment of the market having high demand.” Demand is “very, very high, and higher perhaps than any of us might have expected when we started the year,” she said. “The supply chain has actually been very, very focused on adding more capability. We saw sort of the beginnings of this late last year. We’ve been working very, very closely with our supply chain partners to continue to ramp up supply, adding additional capacity, doing all kinds of productivity improvements.” Su expects more capacity will come online “as we go through the next couple of quarters,” she said. “This will continue to be a key area of focus for the entire supply chain.” Amid the industry’s realization that demand is exceeding supply, “we have done a good job at prioritizing” existing capacity, said Su, “ensuring that we are giving our customers what they need to advance their product lines.” AMD deliberately is leaving some segments of the PC business “underserviced,” especially the “lower end of the PC market,” she said. “We have prioritized some of the higher-end commercial SKUs and gaming SKUs and those kinds of things.” With inventories so “very lean” throughout the semiconductor supply chain, no one is “ordering stuff to put it on the shelves,” but immediately dispatching product that “end customers want,” she said. Supply chain cooperation “is really unprecedented,” said Su.

Micron Technology expects tightness in the DRAM market to continue into the “early part” of 2022, Chief Financial Officer David Zinsner told a virtual Barclays investor conference Wednesday. Despite the shortages, “this is a good time to be in the memory and storage business for sure, with markets being pretty healthy across the board,” he said. “There's not a lot of opportunities to even build inventory into a ‘just in case’ model,” he said. “That's going to be the way things operate for at least some time, given the shortages that are somewhat pervasive in semiconductors and in memory specifically.” Inventory levels for now are “in a good place,” and demand “looks super strong for the year,” he said.

NCTA noted fears the chip shortage could slow broadband deployment. Federal policy on the shortage should be industry- and technology-neutral, NCTA blogged Thursday. It said government efforts to bolster this supply chain, if not "equitable," could strand the tens of billions of dollars being invested in broadband through the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund auction and other actions. NCTA said the U.S. should invest more in R&D and chip manufacturing capacity, and it wants the Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors for America Act fully funded.

Though chipmaker QuickLogic ended Q1 with revenue that was “within the guidance range” of its February forecast, results for the quarter ended April 4 were “still held back due to ongoing COVID-related issues with certain customers and the broader capacity and supply chain issues in the semiconductor industry that have been echoed by many companies recently,” said CEO Brian Faith on a Tuesday earnings call. The company markets voice-enabled SoCs, including an “Amazon-qualified” reference design that lets OEMs develop faster-to-market Alexa smart products. Lead times in the semiconductor industry are “nearly triple” from a year ago, but “not to the extent as certain markets like automotive, where the supply chain is most constricted with some lead times exceeding a year,” said Faith. The CEO is optimistic “there is more of a movement from Washington to invest in onshore semiconductor development,” he said. “We’re talking about tens of billions of dollars.” There's “a lot of additional research” being funded through the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency for “a blend of semiconductor technology” that’s “more scalable” for U.S. chipmakers to “adopt,” he said. “Couple those” with that “we have all of this deep domain expertise in programmable logic that dates back three decades,” he said. “There is a really good opportunity.”

Analog Devices, Inc. (ADI), like most of its peers in the semiconductor industry, expects to face a “supply-constrained environment for the balance of 2021,” said CEO Vincent Roche on a Wednesday earnings call for fiscal Q2 ended May 1. “The supply and demand dynamics in our industry have been well-publicized,” said Roche. “The economic recovery has materialized faster and stronger than initially anticipated, placing unprecedented stress on supply chains globally.” ADI “proactively” invested last year to build capacity, “positioning us to navigate this disruption,” he said. “We are constrained” nevertheless for the year’s second fiscal half, said Roche. ADI’s outlook for fiscal Q3 ending early August is to grow revenue about 16% from a year earlier to $1.7 billion, he said. The forecast “factors in all the elements of supply” across silicon procurements internally and externally, plus “all the back-end operations,” including assembly and testing, he said. “We feel very confident in that number,” said Roche. “Everything” driving supply constraints in future quarters “will depend on demand,” he said. “We’re increasing our capacity. We’re getting more wafer supply in general.” ADI expects “sequential improvements” in its output “over the coming months,” he said. "The second half of the year, given our confidence in supply, we will have a better second half than first half."

A $50 billion federal “investment program” to “incentivize” chipmaking would add $24.6 billion annually to the U.S. economy and create an average of 185,000 temporary U.S. jobs through 2026, reported the Semiconductor Industry Association and Oxford Economics Wednesday. The six-year buildout would infuse $147.7 billion yearly cumulatively into the U.S. GDP, they said: The federal investment “can be expected to substantially increase the demand for talent within the semiconductor industry.” As more domestic investments in semiconductor R&D and manufacturing come online and increase production, “the industry will need to hire more workers in a range of occupations,” they said. The “enduring positive impact ... is an additional 280,000 new jobs,” with 42,000 of those in the domestic semiconductor industry. “This would boost U.S. semiconductor industry employment to 319,000 and its total jobs impact to 2.13 million in 2027.”

Evidence is growing that semiconductor supply constraints will “persist longer than anticipated, intensifying and likely extending the current cyclical upturn into next year,” reported Fitch Ratings Thursday. Industry previously expected this to “dissipate” in 2021's second half “as foundries ramped up production,” it said. But recent setbacks, including the Texas winter storms in February and Taiwan’s prolonged drought, “exacerbated” the supply constraints, said Fitch. Though the water supply in Taiwan is tight due to the lack of rainfall in the past year, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., the world's largest foundry, expects no impact to operations due to its water-conservation program, said executives on an earnings call last month. Foundries, including TSMC, are “aggressively adding capacity, but the acquisition and validation of chip making tools and production of finished semiconductors have historically taken roughly one year,” it said. Though that could result in rationing available supply among customers and higher prices for many products through 2021, “we expect structurally higher inventory through the chip supply chain over time, and more strategic engagement between larger customers and chipmakers to reduce risks related to future supply constraints,” it said.

OnMicro started volume production on a new line of multi-protocol Bluetooth SoCs, said the chipmaker Thursday. Applications include smartwatches, voice remote controllers, Bluetooth mesh smart home devices and PC peripherals such as wireless keyboards and mice, it said.

The global chips shortage will persist through 2021, and likely won’t recover to “normal levels” until Q2 2022, reported Gartner Wednesday. The shortage will continue to “constrain” production of many “electronic equipment types,” said analyst Kanishka Chauhan. “Foundries are increasing wafer prices, and in turn, chip companies are increasing device prices.” The shortage started mainly with power management devices, display drivers and microcontrollers and extended to substrates, wire bonding, passives, materials and testing, said Gartner.