Advanced Micro Devices CEO Lisa Su is “quite pleased” with progress her company is making to increase supply amid the strong “semiconductor demand environment,” she said on a Q2 call Tuesday. “We've been working on supply for the past couple of quarters,” she said. “We do see some level of constraints, but we are making progress each quarter,” enough so AMD exceeded its revenue guidance for the quarter, she said. Supply is “tight, like you've heard from many other companies, through the end of this year,” but capacity “improves in 2022,” said Su: “We do have confidence that we can continue to grow substantially as we go into the second half of this year and into 2022 with the supply chain.” The stock closed 7.6% higher Wednesday at $97.93.

Congress can “reinvigorate” U.S. chipmaking by funding initiatives authorized in the Chips for America Act and enacting an investment tax credit to “build and modernize” U.S. fabs, the Semiconductor Industry Association, Information Technology Industry Council and 18 other groups and associations wrote the House and Senate leadership Thursday. The Senate approved $52 billion in funding last month; the House hasn’t acted. “These initiatives will help grow the U.S. economy, create hundreds of thousands of good-paying middle-class jobs in advanced manufacturing and other fields, unleash billions in private-sector investments, assure the supply of critical components essential to virtually all sectors of the economy, and strengthen our national security,” said the organizations. “The need is urgent.”

GlobalFoundries will invest $1 billion to “immediately” increase capacity by 150,000 wafers a year at its existing fab in Malta, New York, “to help address the global chip shortage,” it said Monday. GF will also build a second fab in Malta to meet “growing demand for secure, feature-rich chips needed by high-growth markets,” including automotive, 5G connectivity and IoT, it said: GF will fund the new facility "through private-public partnerships," it said.

The "first wave" of U.S.-hired engineers arrived in Taiwan in late April for training on 5-nanometer technology for the fab that Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. is building in Arizona, said Chairman Mark Liu on a Q2 earnings call Thursday. “We are actively in a fast learning phase to optimize the operating efficiency for the U.S. fab,” he said. Construction of the fab has already begun, with equipment move-in scheduled for second-half 2022. TSMC expects phase 1 volume production of 20,000 wafers a month will begin in Q1 2024, he said. “We do not rule out the possibility of a second phase of expansion.”

Q2 revenue grew 67% at Nordic Semiconductor, a key supplier of Bluetooth Low Energy components, the chipmaker reported Tuesday. Growth is “currently capped” by the constrained supply of wafers, and “the continued strong demand led to a further increase in order backlog,” it said. Nordic’s June 30 backlog stood at $1.25 billion, up 520% year-on-year and 56% above the backlog March 31. Bluetooth orders were 91% of the Q2 backlog, CEO Svenn-Tore Larsen told investors. When Nordic can deliver the orders and eliminate the backlog very much will depend on the wafer supply, but he sees the backlog “stretching throughout 2022,” he said: “We need to focus on all customers and ensure we keep them floating,” while working with vendors to “get the wafers needed to keep our customers going.” The stock closed 5.6% higher Tuesday at $28.10.

Chip group Semi and tech foundation Mitre Engenuity seek feedback from industry rank and file on challenges facing the sector as the U.S. prepares to provide funding and innovation incentives to help chipmakers better compete with China. The survey sponsors said they want to ensure government funding is “spent wisely” and “put to optimal use.” Information shared will be reported in “non-identifiable form.” The survey closes July 20.

Global chip industry sales were $43.6 billion in May, up 26.2% year on year and 4.1% up from April, reported the Semiconductor Industry Association Tuesday. Demand remained high across major regional markets, said SIA President John Neuffer. “The industry shipped more units on a three-month moving basis in May than during any previous month in the market’s history.” Neuffer said production has ramped up significantly to address rising demand.

The chip shortage will continue to be a “significant factor” in the automotive market near term, “and it's no doubt currently impacting the production-driven revenue of QNX,” BlackBerry’s embedded systems operating system software, said CEO John Chen on an earnings call Thursday for fiscal Q1 ended May 31. “The scale of the impact varies by region and by OEM," and looks to be “greatest” in North America, “less so” in Europe and Asia,” he said. One of BlackBerry’s largest automotive OEM customers in North America “indicated that production in Q2 will be impacted or may be impacted by up to 50%, but others are less severe,” he said. Q2 appears to be the “low point,” with Q3 improving and Q4 “further so,” he said. “The impact also looks to be smaller than that of the pandemic last year.” BlackBerry estimates ONX software is installed in nearly 200 million vehicles on the road globally, up from 175 million last year.

Amid the continuing low supply of chips and mounting vehicle order backlogs, “I don't know when we'll get to normal,” Ford CEO Jim Farley told a Deutsche Bank investors conference virtually Thursday. Ford has “like two years” of order backlogs on the Bronco SUV, and for the Mustang Mach-E electric vehicle, it’s “months and months and months around the world,” he said. The status is the same for the F-150 Lightning electric truck, “so I think it's going to be a while” for normalcy to return, he said. “We've talked to all the foundries. We've talked to all of the semi manufacturers.” Ford and the industry will need “to handle our supply chain differently for these key electronic components,” because they make up more than half of automakers’ bill of materials, he said. “This is a huge opportunity to learn how to manage the supply chain differently” than protecting against “a black swan weather event,” he said. “We're getting a couple of weeks’ visibility” into chips supply, said Harley. The discussions with the chipmakers “have been very insightful,” he said. “I would say, in the second half of the year, things are definitely going to get better for us.” Chips availability is “a very fluid situation,” he said. “We are learning that this is a scramble to get the modules in the vehicles,” even by second half, he said. “You're looking at 2022 -- sometime during 2022 -- before we'll get to a normal level of availability.”

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and ranking member Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, bowed the Facilitating American-Built Semiconductors Act Thursday. It would create a 25% tax credit for chipmaking investments. “The supply of everything from computers to cars is affected by these shortages, and the way to fix this problem is to bring chip manufacturing back to” the U.S., Wyden said. The Semiconductor Industry Association praised the bill.