We have developed a number of products based on STM32Fx processors and can now no longer find stock to buy. If you look on Farnells website they stock over 1000 different STM32 processors with only 4 in stock and the rest on a 1 year lead time.

[Rick Hamilton]

https://uk.farnell.com/c/semiconductors-ics/microcontrollers-mcu?st=stm32f

This has been a problem for over a year, what alternatives can we use?

[Uwe Bonnes]

It is a tough situation for everyone. Possible things to do:

• check findchips.com often and with luck something pops up for your needs
• buy at a premium price form dealers with low reputation
• consider alternatives. Few MCUs are available on stock, the RP2040 has lot of stock at this time
• For low count, high value design, consider reusing chips e.g. from demo boards

[Rick Hamilton]

Thanks for these hints. We usually use octopart.com. The problem is we mass produce several products (int the 10's of thousands) already established, already developed.

[Tesla DeLorean]

If you placed and paid for your order a year ago you'd likely have parts in your hand today.​

Buying parts in the build-to-order model requires planning, retail distribution has to order from random demand, and has no interest in holding large stock of parts it can't sell but has to pay for.

S​T is selling all the parts they can build, don't expect the situation to improve drastically any time soon or for demand to shrink significantly. The industry indicates this is going to continue for another 12 to 18 months.

I​f you need parts in the near term you'll need to work with brokers, or act quickly to buy free stock as it arrives at retail distributors.

[po221]

Hello

How do Farnell, Mouser and co whose job was precisely to offer a large catalog?

How can work a company designing or maintaining and repairing electronic part today? It's not built-to-order with planning model.

octopart.com and findchips.com great but that's surely what feeds data to market-killing traders.

[Tesla DeLorean]

No, I think one of their jobs is to try and maintain equilibrium, and flow through of product, when a) buyers show up randomly, and want random amounts of product, and b) have little control of production, industry or economy.

Ideally they hold next to no inventory, and can quickly move deliveries out to the customers. Bankers really don't like inventory.

This is a lot easier to do with 10-12 week lead times, and manufacturer's with slack capacity at the fabs where they can stuff a predictive/speculative assortment of parts they think they can sell, whilst keeping the fab at close to 100% operation. Perhaps looking at sell-thru rates and inventories on hand at all distributors and polling buyers to see if they want to pull-in or push-out deliveries on their books, ultimately to try to keep things flowing in the 4-8 week horizon.

Now agreeably the current situation is far from ideal, but people need to stop fussing about things they can't control, and concentration of the things they CAN control.

Some will need to dump STM32 parts from their products, some will need to revise/refresh their designs, and maintain form-fit-function to their customers. This will clearly be harder for companies who fired/disbanded their design engineering teams assuming manufacturing the same thing for a decade will carry them through. Staffing is going to be a challenge, both from availability and cost.

Also a lot of unprofitable lines are going to be pushed EOL, to make capacity available for things that have the highest yield and margins.

Pretty sure the brokers have a much better handle on demand and market pricing than most anyone buying through retail distributors..

[po221]

OK but

How should someone who wants to develop a product select one or more components and buy them?

Even if he knows how to anticipate volumes, how can he know that ST will produce this and abandon that?

For example, I plan to make an app with an STM32L431RCT6 for many reasons, including the presence of a quad SPI (just to add a nice feature); How do I go about buying it or considering another model?

(it's a real question)

"stop fussing about things they can't control" ok

but how does he manage to buy the component that is necessary to repair the cards which it is his job to repair?

Should this function of repairer disappear? This is not in phase with the climatic situation.

How can student projects work?

How can start-up innovate if they have to buy components 2 years in advance for an unknown thing to produce ?

How can we stop these criminal traders?

[Tesla DeLorean]

Work with a sales rep at the distributor, or ST sales office.

Do research, stick details into parametric search, or equivalent functionality in CubeMX/IDE

Well 52-week delivery is a reality, recover parts, or cannibalize, from other boards. Perhaps design with more robustness so MCU or other critical parts aren't failing during normal/expected operation of the equipment. In the mean time your going to have to find sources, and pay market pricing. Clearly this is going to change the dynamic of your business, what you charge, and to the decision to repair/replace.

Students will have to adapt, perhaps using available boards and adding their design additions into those, perhaps focus on software side work, and simulations in the absence of actual hardware. Work with older parts and focus on the design and functional basics. My experience on the forum suggest most completely lack foundational understanding. C C++, and assembler programming can be done on PCs, RPi, etc.

I guess they'll need to get more innovative and adaptive, if you're shooting for a market 2-years in the future you're going to need to be nimble, and able to pivot into where the market will be when they arrive. A lot of consumer product cycles are 18-24 months.

Traders and brokers are not criminal, they connect buyers and sellers at a price the market is setting. You can chose not to buy from them, and they'll either sell to someone else or drop the price. At some point there is going to be a glut of parts and prices will drop. I'm not sure where this inflection point is, but its almost a certainty.

[Rick Hamilton]

We are a long established design and manufacturing company.

It is not possible to run a business based on having to place orders for components 52 weeks in advance.