The chip shortage keeps getting worse – why can't we just make more?
Okay, so you need a $20 billion factory to put out 256-core behemoths that power servers with terabytes of RAM.<p>But if you're GM, you don't need the latest Xeon.  You need a 100 MHz single-core microcontroller, that normally sells for $2 to a hobbyist ordering a single chip, but probably something like $0.50 if you're GM and you order a million.<p>GM would probably happily pay $20 for that microcontroller if it's holding up a $40,000 truck.<p>If those microcontrollers cost 0.1% of what a Xeon costs, shouldn't that mean, to a first order of magnitude, the factory that produces a 100 MHz microcontroller should cost 0.1% of what the factory costs to produce a Xeon?<p>How slow / expensive would it be if you wanted to set up a factory to pump out microcontrollers for GM trucks instead of Xeons for Amazon servers?