[ Wednesday, 6 December 2000 ]
 Inside View - What no passives?

 Bob Gwyn, NIC Eurotech

While 2000 has seen the industry become acutely aware of the impact that shortages of passive components can have, there remains a view that the current situation is nothing but a ‘blip’. Indeed, some experts are already predicting that the market will soften as soon as January 2001. However, while there will, naturally, be some fluctuation in the supply situation over time, such views demonstrate a misunderstanding of the dynamics of the passives market.

Firstly, let’s destroy one myth. Supply problems are not simply dictated by mobile phone production. Sure, phone manufacture plays a significant role, but it is not the only culprit. What many people do not fully appreciate is that the number of passive components in modern electronic products is increasing rather than falling. In the longer term this factor will have a much more significant effect on the ongoing availability of key passives than the highs and lows of the phone market.

So how, in the age of SoC, can passive count increase? The simple answer is physics. Take, for example, a low-voltage, high-speed chip packed with several million transistors. You can’t simply turn all of the transistors on at the same time. Instead you need to condition the power that is supplied to the IC. How do you do this? With a bank of external capacitors. And as clock speeds, gate densities and operating currents continue to rise while voltages fall, the requirement will be for more, not less, of these devices. A case in point is a Voltage Regulation Module circuit for Intel’s Pentium processors. In just two stages of this single module, nine 2700µF/10VDC capacitors are required.

Further evidence that the situation, at least with respect to capacitors, is not set to improve comes with the announcement that the two major tantalum powder suppliers have decided to raise prices significantly and, possibly, cut back production.

What this means is that shortages are here to stay and that buyers should not be lulled into a false sense of security on either product availability or price stability. At the same time, designers and suppliers must work closely on identifying alternative solutions for applications that use products where supply is threatened.

Source: HyperACTIVE - www.electronicsweekly.co.uk