Supply Signal Radar
Weekly semiconductor supply-risk briefs, transcripts, and topic hubs from Semibuffer. Each call keeps its evidence and confidence label attached.
Audio and transcripts
- Week 33: You're Escalating at the Wrong Tier: Week 33: the optics queue starts three tiers up. Coherent says indium phosphide capacity is its primary constraint — and that assembly and test are not. Lumentum is effectively sold out on pump lasers, the EML gap held while high-power lasers worsened, and substrate supplier AXT's backlog runs into 2027. Three tiers of one chain, one limit, with dated relief: Coherent doubles internal indium phosphide output this quarter, a quarter early, and again by end of 2027. Meanwhile Diodes' channel inventory sits below its normal 11–14 week band against record point-of-sale, and about $90 billion of new capacity commitments produce nothing before 2028.
- Week 32: Your Expedite Just Stopped Working: Week 32: the buy side got in line, and the line now has a stated length. Microchip says orders placed inside lead time are going unsupported many times a quarter. onsemi's average lead time stretched from about 27 weeks to about 32 in one quarter. Vishay's book-to-bill hit 1.32, with customers ordering beyond 52 weeks to hold production slots, and ISM's Supplier Deliveries index has now slowed for eight straight months. SanDisk put a duration on it: bits stay on allocation beyond calendar 2027, with $93.9 billion committed at floor pricing across eight datacenter and edge customers. The honest counter is that the front end is not full — Microchip reports about $450 million of its own equipment still undeployed, with the constraint at substrates, subcontract assembly and test.
- Week 31: The Shortage Moved to a Material You Don't Buy: Week 31: the shortage stopped being about memory. Lumentum's CEO says indium phosphide is running more than 30% below customer need and will become more acute than the memory squeeze. Corning's Optical Communications grew 32% with its AI data-center line up 65%, GlobalFoundries signed a proposed $300M CHIPS silicon-photonics LOI, and UMC's Singapore photonics cleanroom ramps late 2027. Meanwhile the general-purpose base came back — and Renesas is retiring a 50-year-old 6-inch analog and discrete line without a date. The honest counter: a 94.1% revenue forecast against 7.4% more silicon area shipped.
- Week 30: You Can Lock a Year of Supply and Still Not Know the Price: Week 30: the buy side stopped waiting and started signing — and what it signed away was optionality, not price. TSMC is reportedly planning 2027 wafer increases up to 25%; Intel and AMD reportedly locked about a year of Chinese server CPU volume without fixing price; NVIDIA and SK Group put more than $500 billion behind AI factories and memory. The honest counter is IDC's PC and smartphone unit declines.