ADAU1451/2/equivalent: Ridiculous leadtimes, preventing adoption

Let's make that TWO YEARS of delays, for parts that were promised three months ago. They just keep pushing it out.

How on earth are is anyone supposed to plan for anything with this kind of nonsense? It makes me want to redesign everything without ADI parts entirely.

High joe42,

from the very first beginning the ADAUs seemed to be rather learning systems for amateurs than tools for professionals. I have always had a queasy feeling about making professional equipment/serial production with this series of DSPs. I never found a ADAU in a large-scale production unit.

DSPs are a small market, more money can be earned with other chips, the DSPs are secondary. I think it was foreseeable that the ADAUs would fall backwards.

And modern chips based on ARM's IP and its DSP unit will replace the Adaus in the long run (or soon?) anyway.

One will be forced to switch over, and now is exactly the right time for it.

Marc

Hello Marc,

FYI, these processors and in many different markets and different products that are produced in the millions. For reasons of protecting the customers who make these products I cannot disclose exactly who and what products but I assure you they are used widely in professional production.

We are working to improve the capacity and on reducing the backlog. There are two reasons why there is a shortage, one is the obvious which has been the covid shutdowns hit the foundry quite hard but the second part of this is the popularity and wide adoption of this part which goes to my making the comment that they are being used in mass production. The demand went way up as the production capacity utilization went way down. It has been back up and we are adding production capability but that takes time.

To reply to Joe, I also have been inquiring as to why the lead times are so long. I was told that they are not really that long that this is a problem with how wafers are allocated and how it shows up in the system as expected ship dates to our distributors. We have been splitting up wafers to ship to different distributors as we produce them but if the entire wafer is not allocated to a particular distributor then the system will show a huge lead time.

If you need relatively smaller quantities then let me know. Also let me know who your distributor is. We also keep some stock aside for sampling for new product development.

Thanks.

Dave T

Thanks, Dave.

The issue I face is that we made a new design, purchased a lot of inventory, and planned its launch, based on the delivery schedules we were provided by ADI and distributors. But once those schedules started to slip, first delaying a delivery by a few months, then a year, then two, we had to pull the plug on the new product launch entirely, because we can't rely on the schedules we were provided by ADI and our distributors. We can't launch, sell thousands of systems, then stop. ADI has put us in a really bad position. And the expense to us was huge.

If we at least had honest, reliable leadtimes, we could plan accordingly. But I can't believe anything ADI or the distributors tell me, because they've been false again and again. How does ADI earn our trust in the future?

We usually use Mouser or Digikey, maybe Arrow, but it doesn't matter much to us. When I inquired to DK about our orders that are now 2 years delayed from the original promise, they asked us to justify our purchase, basically "how badly do you need these", which I found insulting. It indicates to me that they are allocating the parts not in the order in which they were purchased, but how important ADI thinks the sale is. It feels like we're being bumped in favor of "preferred" customers unless we complain and beg.

So from our perspective, ADI has misled us time and time again on delivery schedules, and left us the impression that our business is insignificant and unworthy. As a business, we just can't operate that way. This is why I'm seriously considering moving away from ADI parts.

All they have to do is be honest and trustworthy.

We have enough to develop with, but there's no point to developing if we have no reliable information about when we can actually purchase inventory.

And now I just heard from Digikey - beyond the 2 year, 3 month delay already instituted - for parts that were due several months ago - "Manufacturer is currently unable to commit a delivery date".

Well, yeah, we knew that already, since it's been pushed back so many times already. I'm not sure if I should feel better or worse about this.

(I wonder if it has anything to do with us ordering before they imposed a 32% price increase... wouldn't that be something if this was canceled in favor of more $$ orders?)

I know you're not involved in any of this, Dave, but what are businesses like mine supposed to do in this situation?

Hello Joe42,

You are correct that I am not in the supply or production chain but I am on the front lines with the customers and ultimately we need to make sure our customers can service their customers and obviously the more you sell the more we sell. We have certainly been placed in a bad spot with production and people in a much higher pay grade than I need to figure this out. You are obviously not the only one who is having trouble. I thank you for taking the time to express your opinions and backed them up very significant points. What I can do is to send a link to your posts up the chain of command so there is awareness of the pain our customers are going through. We have had directives not to ignore broad market customers so I am hopeful these lead times are not real. One of the reasons you were asked how badly do you need it is because we are finding that there are many orders in the system that are there just for extra stock. Kind of like when toilet paper supply is constrained everyone goes out and buys enough for a year. So we are working with our distributors to ferret through these orders to figure out how many are real. This is part of what it causing these lead times to balloon out of sight. I hope this is right and we can pull in these lead times.

Keep informing us about your situation.

Dave T

Fair enough, I appreciate your help and private correspondence.

As for justifications vs hoarding, I think hoarding is exactly what the large companies are doing anyway, and if we don't have any reliable delivery schedules, we have no choice but to "hoard" as much as stock as we think we need for the next X years, depending on how we estimate when general availability will return.

If the toilet paper manufacturers were stating that, after missing promised ship deadlines regularly, that they could suddenly not deliver more for 2+ years, it's entirely appropriate to purchase enough to last that long. (Or switch to a bidet!)

If ADI would simply provide *accurate* scheduling information that we can actually rely on, and stop pulling parts from smaller businesses/distributors, we wouldn't have to buy based on worst-case scenario. But because the delivery promises have been violated so regularly and severely, there really is no other option, and it's difficult to believe further claims from ADI.

I'd much rather have no information than false information. Then at least we can make decisions based on this.

Hello joe42 and Marc,

Sorry to hear of the issues getting parts. Where I work we're primarily a contract mfr with a diverse client base and part shortages commensurate with that. Yet we also market a 10-in, 4-out mic/line mixer using a PIC micro and a gaggle of ADAU1701s. We built a run just before Covid hit and haven't sold a single one for many months -- but now they're moving again. Good thing we had built so much inventory since now there's no -1701s to be had. So this appears to be the issue all over the industry. As for DSPs being for amateurs, yes products like smartphones run an ARM processor for everything -- yet it takes a smartphone-like development team to make that happen. And I've noticed that products like these can only apply EQ to sources already in frequency domain (e.g., MP3) -- not analog inputs like radio. DSPs are dedicated multiply-and-add machines that are well-suited for filters and such, and there was no way we could have developed a mixer with all the features we packed into this one without SigmaDSPs and SigmaStudio.

Best regards,

Bob