Semiconductors and ICs update: Expanding lead times fuel market

USA: According to Converge Market Insights, the market is settling into a fairly consistent pattern of shortages and extended lead times, which is being driven by the following factors:

* Standard logic shortages are continuing with no near-term end in sight. Texas Instruments (TI) is on allocation, while NXP, Fairchild and ST Micro are all running lead times of 12 to 20 weeks.

* Microcontroller shortages are not easing, with Atmel now joining Freescale, TI and Infineon in having some lines out to 20+ weeks. Freescale's Coldfire and TI's MSP430s are the tightest of the bunch.

* Altera and TI programmable logic and Altera and Freescale DSP lead times have not changed over the last eight to 10 weeks, while over that same time period Broadcom's networking devices (Ethernet switches, transceivers and controllers) have tightened.

* Lead times on optoelectronics (couplers and LEDs) have risen steadily over the last two months with some lead times stretched out to 28 weeks on Vishay couplers and 16 weeks on Osram LEDs, with several lines on allocation.

* The most highly visible shortages right now are in the analog arena, with data converters, op amps and voltage regulators. ST Micro is on allocation with its op amps and voltage regulators, while lead times on TI data converters are in the mid-20s and pressure to increase some prices is increasing.