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打卡领奖 | 《经济学人》读译参考 day1448
打卡领奖 | 《经济学人》读译参考 day1449

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the pandemic thus arrived at the worst possible time. after an early crash, demand in several segments boomed, says alan priestley of gartner, another consultancy. locked-down consumers bought laptops and other gadgets. cloud-computing operators, which are big consumers of high-end chips, scrambled to add servers to deal with the wave of home-workers. the car industry was particularly badly hit by a decision to cut orders early in the pandemic. demand for cars has since recovered. but the complexities of the production process means it takes three to four months to turn a blank silicon wafer into a usable batch of chips. “i can cancel my orders in an afternoon,” says mr penn. “if i want to start them up again, that takes months-and anyway, that capacity is now busy serving other customers.”

因此，新冠来得正是最糟糕的时候。另一家咨询公司高德纳(gartner)的阿兰·普里斯特利表示，在早期的崩溃之后，几个领域的需求都出现了增长。被疫情封锁在家的消费者购买了笔记本电脑和其他电子产品。云计算运营商是高端芯片的大消费者，他们争相增加服务器以应对在家办公的浪潮。汽车行业在疫情初期决定削减芯片订单，这让它受到的冲击尤其严重。此后对汽车的需求已经恢复。但是复杂的生产过程意味着将一块空白的硅片变成一批可用的芯片需要三到四个月的时间。佩恩表示：“我可以在一个下午取消订单，但如果我想恢复它们那么需要几个月的时间，而且不管怎样，这些产能现在都在忙着为其他客户服务。”

the impact of the pandemic, in turn, has been made worse by industry-specific problems. in march a chip plant owned by renesas, a japanese firm, caught fire, piling pain on the car industry. some chipmakers, meanwhile, face shortages of their own. many cheap, workaday parts are made in older factories designed to process silicon wafers that are 200mm in diameter, or even smaller. (these days 300mm is the standard.) efforts to boost capacity are stymied by the fact that few toolmakers still make the old-style machines, says mr priestley. the market for second- hand 200mm tools, meanwhile, has been stripped bare.

疫情的影响又因特定行业的问题而变得更加严重。今年3月，日本瑞萨公司旗下的一家芯片工厂起火，给汽车行业带来了痛苦。与此同时，一些芯片制造商也面临着自身芯片的短缺。许多廉价的普通部件都是在旧工厂里制造的，这些工厂的设计目的是加工直径200毫米甚至更小的硅晶圆。(目前标准是300mm。)普里斯特利说，提高产能的努力受到了一个事实的阻碍，那就是仍在制造老式机器的工具制造商寥寥无几。与此同时，二手市场上生产200毫米硅片的机器早已断货。

but the pork cycle is turning once again. taiwan semiconductor manufacturing company, the world’s biggest contract chipmaker, plans to spend $3obn on new capacity this year alone. samsung electronics and intel, two other giants, have pencilled in $28bn and $2obn respectively; second-tier chipmakers are ramping up spending too. that will bring relief to the wider economy, says mr priestley,but not immediately. on may 14th jim whitehurst, the boss of ibm, a computer-maker, said he thought the shortages might last for two years. and, says mr penn, when the drought eventually ends, chipmakers may find they face a familiar problem, but on a bigger scale: a capacity splurge in response to serious shortages today could well mean a sizeable glut tomorrow.

但猪肉周期正再次转向。全球最大的代工芯片制造商台积电仅今年就计划投资30亿美元用于新增产能。另外两家巨头三星电子和英特尔分别拟投资280亿美元和20亿美元。二线芯片制造商也在加大支出。普里斯特利说先生说，这将为更广泛的经济带来缓解，但不会立竿见影。5月14日，计算机制造商ibm的老板吉姆·怀特赫斯特说，他认为这种短缺可能会持续两年。佩恩表示，当短缺最终结束时，芯片制造商可能会发现他们面临一个熟悉的问题，不过规模更大：今天为应对严重短缺而出现的产能过剩，很可能意味着明天将出现大规模的产能过剩。