Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) reportedly asked its staff to take vacations, personal computer manufacturers have been lowering their chip demand, and demand from smartphone makers has dropped sharply and is forecasted to get worse going into 2023.The high end is seeing softnessWhen we talk about high-end chips, we usually are referring to the newest and most advanced technologies.Partly this was because the types of components used in vehicles didn’t benefit from newer technologies, and there is a long and expensive process to move them to more modern nodes.The factories making these chips use older tools, and since these are not terribly profitable commodity parts, there has been little incentive to invest in growing the capacity.Aggregation of segments masks underlying dynamicsOne lesson we can learn from this mess is that when you take an aggregated view of the semiconductor sector, combining the high end, commodity, and mature chip sectors, it can mask what is going on in different segments of the market."