Source: Apple
When will the world move beyond the current chip shortage? No time soon, according to a piece from the Wall Street Journal. While a lack of fabs is one issue, a bigger issue may be a lack of people to run them. 9 to 5 Mac highlights the Journal report. According to that:
New chip-making facilities, known as fabrication plants, or “fabs,” require thousands of college-educated engineers to operate. Technicians oversee and manage the manufacturing process, while researchers help innovate new types of chips and ways of making them.
The piece has the dean of National Taiwan University’s College of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science saying, “The talent shortage problem has become even more severe, mainly because of the increase in demand.” They go on to say that they’re “not optimistic that we can totally resolve this problem.”
And it’s a big problem. And it’s growing. The piece says:
An August report from [a] recruiting platform estimated that the average monthly shortfall in semiconductor workers was about 27,700 employees, up 44% from the previous year.
And that’s before the fabs being built to catch up with demand even come online. Where are the future fab workers of the world? Probably looking to do something cooler. The piece indicates that it’s hard to attract software engineers to chipmaking, “as the role is very much a behind-the-scenes one, with no ability to point to a finished product in the way a consumer app developer can.” According to the Journal:
Santosh Kurinec, a professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology, said the number of students enrolled in the school’s undergraduate electrical-engineering program has dwindled steadily, from about 50 in the mid-1980s to about 10 now. “Some want to go make an app for Google and Facebook and others,” she said.
