Chip shortage mitigated!

Impulse Embedded continues to be able supply their market leading VELA range of Rack PCs despite a global audio chip shortage.

The global IC shortage currently in effect is showing little sign of easing up. Countless factory workers furloughed due to COVID-19, US sanctions levied on China by the Trump administration, political unrest between Taiwan and China, a ship stuck in the Suez Canal, even a drought in mainland Taiwan — this has been a perfect storm of issues that could not have been designed more efficiently to disrupt the manufacturing and supply chain of chips and computing components across the globe.

Shortly after the COVID-19 pandemic struck the world saw issues in the supply chain manifest in ways that could never have been expected — a shortage of plaster, hiking up prices per bag to crazy prices being just one of them — and the global IC shortage is rearing its head in similar ways in the world of both consumer and industrial computing components. The obvious go-to is the shortage of GPUs, with prices for graphics cards in Q2 skyrocketing due to the 'immovable object’ that is the IC shortage vs the ‘unstoppable force’ that is unparalleled demand through the rather controversial Bitcoin mining.

GPUs were perhaps always destined for this shortage, but one area now being seen are the unprecedented shortages in the world of audio. As innocuous as it may sound (no pun intended) the shortage of audio chips has caused damaging delays across the industrial and embedded computing supply chain globally. Difficult to anticipate, this issue has left some manufacturers with little to no supply option, but some major manufacturers such as Advantech have reacted quickly to the event and side-stepped this 'immovable object'. The moment news broke of this audio chip shortage Advantech worked on developing a non-audio version of their most popular motherboards to help mitigate the supply issues and help customers meet their IPC deadlines.

The Impulse VELA range of Industrial Rack PCs is powered by the latest market-leading Advantech components, and with up to 9th Gen. boards in stock and more on the way, the Impulse VELA Racks can cater for low to high end IPC projects needing immediate or short-term build and despatch. Even as lead times stretch and stock levels of the audio version diminish, due to the fast response of Advantech’s development team in bringing a non-audio version of their most popular motherboards to market, Impulse Embedded VELA Racks can continue to support industrial computing projects despite these ongoing global shortages.

And for customers with a requirement for audio, Impulse is able to install and configure audio expansion cards as part of the build process, meaning supply of Industrial Rack PCs can remain uninterrupted, despite this shortage.

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