AI server boom fuels record supply crunch for the ‘rice of electronics’

Global inventories of multilayer ceramic capacitors (MLCCs) – tiny components dubbed “the rice of the electronics industry” – have dropped to a record low as the industry grapples with surging demand from artificial intelligence infrastructure.

Worldwide distributor inventory volume for the components – which act as electrical buffers in circuit boards and are increasingly used in massive volumes in high-performance servers – declined 8 per cent by August 9 compared with four weeks earlier,...