SAN JOSE, USA:  There are now widespread reports of shortages of components in the supply chain, and several chipmakers have increased the prices of select products. Texas Instruments Inc., reports say, has jacked up the prices of select products by as much as 40 per cent.

According to a report from FBR, components from Texas Instruments face the most serious scarcity. The other companies experiencing shortages of parts include On Semiconductor, Fairchild, STMicroelectronics, Diodes, and IR. 

Multi-layer ceramic capacitors are generally in short supply, says the report from FBR.

Distribution contacts continue to experience shortages of chips across product lines at Broadcom, the report says.

As for hard-disk drives, Blu-ray optical-disk drives, and DDR2/DDR3 memory chips, component tightness, and not shortages, still exists.

Regarding foundries, UMC and TSMC, for example, are witnessing production queues for 300-mm (longer queue) and 200-mm (shorter queue), though companies can jump the queue by paying more hot lots, the FBR as per the report, which adds that memory prices, including those of DRAM and NAND, are expected to go up in the second quarter of 2010.