[sdiy] Blimey

[brianw]

Thanks for sharing those links, Ben.

I went to THAT Corp's web site looking for the press release, and could not find it. However, I did find the following:

"This four-inch wafer fab gives THAT Corporation the only IC production facility focused primarily on high-performance audio components. While this production fab facility primarily produces THAT’s own proprietary product, it is also well suited to service other semiconductor manufacturing needs. Foundry customers are invited to design their own chips on our existing processes or consult with THAT corporation’s fab engineering team to design their own processes. For example THAT’s fab has provided fabricated wafers to the “End of Life” semiconductor market where low production volume, customized processes are typical. THAT has also provided wafer processing services such as thin film deposition or photomasking."

I have not contacted THAT Corp to confirm, but the above seems to imply that anyone could fund a run of these chips, so long as they're willing to pay the cost. Of course, if they really are shutting down their wafer fab entirely, including for custom customer orders, then that would make things difficult.

If they're shutting down the wafer fab, then some other company could buy it. I imagine it's either not cheap to buy, or at least not cheap to run.

This is strange news, because when tariffs are forcing prices up, in the hopes of on-shoring things like chip fab, one business that was born out of abandoned wafer fab facilities at a time when chip fab was moving to Asia is now giving up on a domestic fab when the powers that be are hoping to increase domestic manufacturing. One almost gets the impression that economies are more complex than assumed.

Brian


On Sep 3, 2026, at 8:27 PM, Ben Bradley wrote:
> Made me look, found a thread on diyaudio:
> https://www.diyaudio.com/community/threads/end-of-life-for-several-that-ics.443934/
> And groupdiy:
> https://groupdiy.com/threads/that-discontinuing-all-their-good-chips.94561
> 
> A similar thing happened with the "new" TI NE5532. It's actually
> discontinued, and another lesser chip is being sold with that part
> number.
> https://www.diyaudio.com/community/threads/a-new-ne5532-by-december-2025.437381/
> 
> 
> On Thu, 3 Sept 2026 at 14:55, Neil Johnson via Synth-diy
> <synth-diy at synth-diy.org> wrote:
>> 
>> Just heard some very unfortunate news for audio folks..... not sure how public it is yet, but ... bloody hell......
>> 
>> Neil