The THAT 2180 have been in a worldwide shortage since 18 months and it is not finished. This is an explanation by Keith Persin the Managing Director of THAT.
The delays are due to the packaging stage of manufacturing process as this is outsourced and currently THAT Corporation have only one source for the SIP package. Wafer availability and test capacity are not a problem. The packaging vendor is based in India and the initial delays were due to the lockdown because of COVID19. The factory is now at reduced capacity due to new safe distance working practices. However, there are compound problems. The SIP mold for that package is old and has two sections. One section needed repair and has been sent to a specialist tooling company in Malaysia, but shortly after it arrived the tooling vendor shut down due to Covid-19. Efforts are being made to recover the tooling and complete the refurbishing work. When back up and running again the mold process is slow and limited capacity and a 28-week order back log has built up.
The shortage was only for the SIP packages, not for the smaller SOIC package 2181.
The
THAT 2181 is exactly the same chip inside, the only difference being that it is not laser trimmed for distortion (the package is too small).
To avoid being out of stock of CP4500 for 2 years, we decided to reengineer our product in order to use the SOIC packages.
We designed an easy procedure to do the distortion setup with a trim potentiometer. We are now able to achieve even better distortion results than with the pre-trimmed VCA's.
In conclusion, the specs of the CP4500 using the SOIC packages are exactly the same (or better) as those using the SIP package.
