IC chip shortage
Commuters use Tokyo trains either with a paper ticket, or with a variety of pre-paid cards, and pre-paid card apps on their smartphones. I use a Pasmo card (about the size of a credit card). It’s very convenient. When the credit is diminished I can easily re-charge it. I habitually re-charge my card with ¥1,000 (about $10) only, so that if I lose it (as has happened several times), I won’t be losing a lot of money with it. I’ve read in the news that some pre-paid card sales are being suspended due to an IC chip shortage in the world. Well, now that bad news has hit home. On Thursday, July 6, 2023, I saw English-Japanese bilingual notices posted at my local station announcing the suspension of card sales until further notice.
An integrated circuit (IC) is a collection of tiny electronic components created and connected together on a single semiconductor wafer to achieve a common function; as an oscillator, logic gate, amplifier, timer, counter, computer memory, or microprocessor among other things.
An IC is the fundamental building block of all modern electronic devices. It consists of functional miniature circuits with millions of resistors, capacitors, diodes and transistors. All these interconnected components form an integrated system fabricated into a thin semiconductor substrate which is usually silicon crystal. It is sometimes called a chip or microchip. Before integrated circuits, computers used relatively large (and hot) vacuum tubes. The Integrated Circuit was an incredibly clever idea and it has made possible all kinds of microelectronic gadgets we use today.
IC chips are the fundamental building block of all modern electronic devices.
With the boom of electronic device usage, the demand for computing power is higher than ever. Millions of devices today rely on computer chips. And right now, there just aren't enough of them to meet industry demand. As a result, many popular products are in short supply. The crisis that has squeezed global chipmakers since late last year offered a glimpse of how the COVID-19 pandemic and geopolitical uncertainties - like the war in Ukraine - have distorted supply chains in the highly globalized semiconductor industry. China makes and exports a lot of IC chips. I wonder if tension between the U.S. and China has something to do with it - like, maybe China is deliberately limiting its manufacture and export of chips just to show the world that it can.