FAQ Friday

We love this question, because we think about the supply chain a lot. One thing that you might think is that when you’re building something that’s complicated, you wanna dual source absolutely everything. You wanna have multiple sources for everything. That seems like it makes sense, but it actually doesn’t make quite as much sense as it sounds.

Why? Because if you dual source absolutely everything, if you design around the ability to swap components, you don’t build on the differentiation that a particular component has.

And for us, yes, we wanna dual source those things that don’t have differentiation, capacitors and resistors and so on. But for many, many, many other parts in the BOM, we wanna be able to go deep with a particular partner. We wanna pick a winner, we wanna put a ring on that finger, and really build a relationship together.

Let me give you a concrete example. Renesas, one of our favorite partners. Renesas makes our voltage regulators, and we’ve got one of my favorite parts on the BOM — this is Cosmo, our AMD Turin-based system — the RAA229620A. Right here, this little guy. This thing is a workhorse. It’s the voltage regulator that we use for the CPU. We also use it for the switch. We used its antecedent on Gimlet, our AMD Milan-based system, and we love this part.

We love the rich software that we can build on top of this. Black box support, tracing support, and so on. We’ve been able to build really interesting software on top of the 229620A.

Now, what does that mean? That means that Renesas is our only supplier for that part. But they know that we are committed to the partnership with them, and we’re gonna succeed together. So when we have a supply chain issue — and it’s when, not if, because the supply chain is really complicated — we are able to appeal to that partnership and say, "Hey, when you’ve got allocation, make sure you’re giving special consideration to our relationship and our commitment to go succeed together."

So yes, you do wanna dual source things where you can, but that single sourcing is surprisingly really important for the supply chain, and our relationship with Renesas is a great example of that.

Thanks, and see you next time.