We are heading for war in Europe for the third time in our history. There is no agreement, the tension is rising and it seems that Russia will try to attack Ukraine by force. This will once again change the geostrategic landscape of hardware where several manufacturers have already given their first impressions of how they will be impacted. What will be the material implications of the war between the NATO, Russia and Ukraine?
There are several points to consider in this military and human crisis: it will aggravate the already existing flea crisis.
The war between Russia, Ukraine, NATO and the material
It is probably the least important in view of the panorama, but it is the question that concerns us here and we will approach it in a different way. There is a word, a chemical element, a gas that can change everything and that we were telling you about just a few days ago: Neonproduced and distributed by the Ukrainian Naftogaz.
ASML clears balls
In case we didn’t already know, Ukraine is the largest exporter of neon in the world and that has half if not all of the industry hanging in the balance, including ASML. The company uses this material for gas-phase laser scanners, so it is already carrying out alternative production in other countries.
As a fairly small quantity is required compared to other industries in the sector, it does not seem to have any problems in maintaining the production rate, which is key, on the other hand, for Samsung, Intel and TSMC to meet their sheet. of road. .
Micron will also diversify
As a good American company, Micron has several neon suppliers for its NAND Flash. In this case, war and paralysis will directly influence it, but its CEO doesn’t seem worried:
“It’s true, we have a small portion of our noble gases coming from Ukraine and of course we have a large inventory but more importantly we have multiple sources of supply. Although we continue to monitor the situation carefully and while we certainly expected the situation to improve, we believe, based on the current analysis, that our noble gas supply chain is in reasonable condition.
Intel, TSMC and silent Samsung
The three main players have not commented on this, but they also depend on neon as a key gas in certain processes. It doesn’t seem like it will affect them too much, especially having Japan, Taiwan or China as suppliers, it’s not a gas they should be worried about like it is for rare earth who come from Russia.
At the moment there is no assessment of how the war will affect the production of chips for these materials, but the demand will surely be diverted to China, which in turn controls part of the mines in Africa.
The logistical problem
Having seen all this and as expected, let’s return to the initial problem of the crisis: logistics and supply times. Transferring production and increasing it to the mentioned countries will completely change the arrival time and there will be delays, surely not immediately because there are reserves, but if the “homework” has not been done, one can surely find delays in key categories like SSD, RAM, CPU and GPUbeing these main strongholds.
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