State of the art machines are used to make state of the art high-value chips. FPGAs, GPUs, CPUs, RAM, SRAM
As those chips run through their life-cycle, their value drops. After 15 years, the price the chips can sell for will drop 90% or more.
If there is a spike in demand at that point, there is no ROI on purchasing brand new equipment.
The demand spike is seen as temporary. Hence, the chip makers are telling the buyers to design out the old chips and upgrade to new. Many companies can do this. But some are constrained by industry regulation (aerospace) or industry practice (semiconductors).
I've mentioned before the irony that companies that make semiconductor equipment are struggling to ship more tools because they can't get enough (of certain chips) to complete building them.
While this is mostly correct, it is worth noting that FPGAs are mostly 28nm and 20nm processes, and have just started shipping on 16nm[1]. That doesn't require state of the art. The FPGA market is comparatively small though so doesn't affect the market dynamics much.
As those chips run through their life-cycle, their value drops. After 15 years, the price the chips can sell for will drop 90% or more.
If there is a spike in demand at that point, there is no ROI on purchasing brand new equipment.
The demand spike is seen as temporary. Hence, the chip makers are telling the buyers to design out the old chips and upgrade to new. Many companies can do this. But some are constrained by industry regulation (aerospace) or industry practice (semiconductors).
I've mentioned before the irony that companies that make semiconductor equipment are struggling to ship more tools because they can't get enough (of certain chips) to complete building them.