Does anyone know the deal with Atmega 328's? They seem to be out of stock everywhere . . .
Does anyone know where they're in stock?
+1 for interest - need to find some in the next couple of weeks.
I have several in stock at http://www.jkdevices.com Also it looks like the bigger suppliers should have shipments by the end of this month.
Thanks!
they go in and out of stock regularly, its kind of a middle line chip that is mainly popular with hobbiest where as others are picked for specific applications, thus smoothing out their stock
It is not just the atmega chips here in the UK. Many times in the past year I have placed routine orders for components which previously have always been a next day delivery, only to find that they are not available.
I started thinking about this when I tried to order some relays to put in stock last week and I was given a delivery date of May 2011. Very frustrating!
Yes I have had this.
Allegro current sensors that are out of stock everywhere in the UK, found 40 on newark in the US but no international shipping. Thankfully there are nice people willing to order for me and ship over here so I don't have to wait for backorder! 40 is still a very minimal amount of stock!
Recession and all that jazz, it's a b*tch
Mowcius
Mouser has had it in stock for quite a while... I stocked up when they had their last batch in. ;D According to their website, they are going to have another big shipment coming in soon...
I have purchased from DFRobot. Took a week to send out my order but otherwise I was happy with my one order from them.
They show some in stock (if the chip only with bootloader is what you are looking for.
I just checked Mouser, it seems that they have some coming in in about a week:
Mouser Product Availability
24,994On Order
Estimated Ship Date
410 9/29/2010
9,310 11/15/2010
15,274 11/15/2010
The problem is the global recession. What happened when this financial crisis struck was the chip manufacturers shut down a lot of their capacity. Then when demand picked up there wasn't the supply to meet it. Most of the chip supplies go to the people who order chips in the several millions and they get first call. Even they are short and the component lead times at the moment are the longest I have known it since the flash shortages in 2002 / 3.
Theres a shortage of 8's and 168's as well. 
but i heard Atmel is coming out with some new replacements for these and so stopped manufacturing some of them.
It's not just the ATMegaxx8s: there are persistent supply problems with the AT90USB chips, too. I'm working on a couple of products right now that are going to be Microchip-based because of repeated weeks-/months-long "Atmel droughts".
I don't know why Atmel is having this problem right now, but I've encountered it before. Back in the 90s, we had to cancel plans to standardize on the 68HC11 because the start-up I was working with was too tiny to get guaranteed supplies: all the chips were getting sucked up by the big customers. We wound up with a mix of 8051s (because they were multi-sourced) and PICs (trading the higher engineering costs of their decidedly non-C-friendly architecture for lower COGS).
I think part of Microchip's success has been based on keeping supply lines open for hobbyists and small companies: it's improved the odds that the engineers making decisions at big companies have had some positive experience with their products somewhere else.