crazyal
Super Member
The semiconductor industry changed about 15 years ago. Back then plants would make chips as fast as they could just so they could sit on a shelf. Often they would become obsolete before actually making it into something. So the push now is for just in time manufacturing. So there's no excessive inventory to deal with the spike in demand. Also not every plant can make a wide variety of chips. For example some fabs just make CPUs for computers and other high end stuff. You don't invest billions into equipment that can make the smallest device on a chip and then use it to make a chip that goes into a tractor's dash. So even if there was excess capacity in a fab somewhere it's most likely equipped with tools that wouldn't be able to make what's needed at a profit.