Where have all the chips gone? Nice lyrics for a song but really, "I want my micro-chips!"

Notice how the American government struggles to comprehend that integrated circuits are like rice to Asia. We need them to function. Oh yeah, we sent all that technology and jobs to foreign lands - duh. Then there's Intel, our biggest IC maker that's still in the CONUS. They had a fire put under them when Apple broke away and is now building their own chips and use an Open Source ISA. The cool thing about this move is the entire Apple line will be using iOS so the product line of iPhones alone can float the whole company and lower the costs across the board. That had to land like a wet, slimy fish on the boardroom table of Intel.

That's okay. Intel plans to build a 22 billion dollar IC manufacturing plant in...wait for it...Arizona! IC manufacturing require lots of clean water. Arizona - really?

Now we all know the biggest IC manufacturing is in Taiwan. You know that country in the long rifle sites of mainland China, the next biggest. I didn't forget about South Korea but they are going to soon be out-gunned by China (bad choice of words).

So this year we buy used cars because all the new ones use chips no longer available. Oh, TVs and all the other consumer products - gone up in price. You don't think marketeers aren't not going to take advantage of a depleted market as valuable as consumer electronics not to mention vital military equipment, air traffic control, and the Interet networking equipment. I think it's high time we forget high speed trains and build up local chips manufacturing before the lights go out.

Blimy, the lights just came back on. It seems running out of chips is a normal thing every four year or there abouts - why? Obsolescence. As nanometer dimensions go down, you have to retrofit the holy bloody fab. That's costs...billions. Not only is Intel building a NEW 22 billion dollar fab, they are retrofitting the 10 billion dollar plant they already have...wait for it...IN PHOENIX!

Poor Phoenix. Now TSMC, those Taiwanese IC giants are building a 10-20 billion dollar plant...you guessed it...in Phoenix! They must be recycling all the toilet water within 500 miles of these plants.

Here's the take-away. We are going to be swimming in chips within two years, so much so, those without facilities aren't going to be able to make a cent. You spend billions to make billions and do it all over again every four years. Yikes.