Do we know what the world-wide production of certain things is/was/are?

[Mark Hammer]

For example, prior to being abandoned, just how many SAD1024, or SAD4096, chips did Reticon ever produce?  How many MN3005 or 3011 or 3009  or MN3214 chips did Matsush*ta ever produce?  How many MK50240s did Mostek make, or SN76477s did TI ever produce? 

Is there a way to find such things out?

[Hides-His-Eyes]

Over nine thousand.

[waltk]

42

[John Lyons]

Yes. 

[candidate]

not enough

[Mark Hammer]

I appreciate the humour, but it was a serious question.  How many of those suckers were actually manufactured?  For example, were there 25,000 SAD4096s made?  100,000?  A million?  Ten million?  When it comes to rare out-of-production semiconductors, is there any way to tell what proportion ended up in commercial products, and how many are still left in warehouses and parts bins around the world?

[Hides-His-Eyes]

No, it's a good question. But I'm not sure who would know, tbh.

[jefe]

I don't know who - besides the manufacturers themselves - would know the production numbers.

[Paul Marossy]

I don't know who - besides the manufacturers themselves - would know the production numbers.

Yeah, my thoughts, too.

[Mark Hammer]

Well do they ever make such information available in some form?

To the list of BBDs, I should also add all those delicious SSM and CEM chips that synth builders/repairers pine for.

[waltk]

Here's my non-smartass answer...

For unit sales/production statistics regarding a particular chip, I would think the best (and maybe only) source would be the manufacturer(s).  I think they mostly consider this to be proprietary information that would leave them at a competitive disadvantage if released - at least for chips currently in production.  To get a direct answer, you would probably have to ask someone who was once involved with sales/marketing at the manufacturer in question - maybe a retired VP of marketing.

There's an organization called the World Semiconductor Trade Statistics (WSTS) Organization that manufacturers can join.  They publish this kind of information in the "Blue Book" and "Green Book", but not to the individual chip level.  Their categories are fairly detailed (you can find worldwide JFET production for example), but not BBD chips as a category.  Members can share more detailed information on a voluntary "give and take" basis, but you have to be a member to share in that. The organization has been around for about 25 years, and has statistics available for 20+ years.

There's also the SIA (Semiconductor Industry Association), but they don't seem to have anything useful.

Your most realistic approach might be to treat it as a Fermi question, and try to estimate the answer within an order of magnitude.  You could either start by thinking about all the end uses of the chip, or by thinking about the overall size and growth of the manufacturer (maybe finding references to various product lines in their old annual reports).