Chips

[XxionxX]

I was reading about conflict minerals and I was wondering if anyone knew where the minerals for our Panda came from. I'm not going to cancel or anything like that, I was just curious to see how far flung the problem is. I wouldn't expect a small company like Pandora to be able to own the entire manufacturing process so I would guess that they would have no choice in the matter.

PS I don't want to give the Panda bad press, so if this stone is better left unturned...

 

[gruso]

Best bet would be to research the components individually.

http://pandorapcb.kicks-ass.net/

Happy homework.

 

[atomicthumbs]

the thing about tantalum is that everything uses it

there is no viable alternative to tantalum capacitors

 

[gruso]

I just learned that Australia is the primary source of tantalum. No conflict here, although if you dare challenge the mining companies you may be removed from power (see: Kevin Rudd).

According to the same article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tantalum#Occurrence) up to 10% of tantalum output comes from conflict regions.

 

[XxionxX]

the thing about tantalum is that everything uses it

there is no viable alternative to tantalum capacitors

Somehow that does not surprise me. <_<

 

[XxionxX]

I just learned that Australia is the primary source of tantalum. No conflict here, although if you dare challenge the mining companies you may be removed from power (see: Kevin Rudd).

According to the same article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tantalum#Occurrence) up to 10% of tantalum output comes from conflict regions.

Well that is better news than I was expecting. I thought It was going to be like what atomicthumbs said. I have no knowledge of what minerals are important in chip manufacturing or where they are located, but if only 10% of the necessary minerals are in a conflict area then there might a good chance that the panda's chips are not from that area.

 

[XxionxX]

So I did some digging and found that one of the companies that was under scrutiny was Texas Instruments. The article did not speculate about how much, and I am inclined to believe that where there is no evidence there is nothing. I will not pass judgement unless I am confronted with something more than "they might be doing this." The article also states that the global market for tantalum was only $200 million US dollars which is chump change in the minerals market. The larger problem seems to be tin, which has a market around $3 billion US dollars (wiki.) It looks close to impossible (for me) to specifically track down the route the minerals take once they are sold by certain groups in the Congo and others. Everything seems to point to the estimates that around 1-10% of tantalum comes from these conflict regions. That works out to around 120 tons of tantalum (the world market is around 1200 tons) assuming the larger estimates. While that is a LOT of capacitors that is still only a 10% chance that our Panda has some conflict minerals in it. It is too bad that it's so hard to track these transactions because it sounds like the Panda might be conflict mineral free or mostly conflict mineral free. It couldn't hurt to have a 'conflict free' sticker on the Panda, but you would have to know where the minerals came from for certain.