Attention Shoppers, We Are Expecting A Shortage Of Chips So Please Plan Ahead
Remember When Rumours Contained Good News?
If the rumours out of DigiTimes and others are accurate, we could be seeing a dearth of both AMD and Intel chips for sale in the near future, along with the traditional increases in price. We have already heard that TSMC’s 7nm line is at full capacity, with plenty of suitors lined up to get their names on the dance card all waiting for the fab to get off of the phone.
The news for those awaiting the release of AMD’s Ryzen 9 3950X is even bleaker, not only do we know the release is delayed until November we now have rather unhappy rumours about why. The delay may not be simply because of lack of production capacity, it could be that AMD is unhappy with the current clock speeds they are seeing; which is something they want to avoid considering the current mood of many enthusiasts. Either way, be it unsatisfactory performance, lack of capacity or simply a choice to focus on pumping out more of the existing third generation Ryzen processors, it seems like we won’t be seeing the 3950X for some time.
AMD doesn’t have a monopoly on bad news either, as rumours surfaced that Intel may be experiencing a shortage of 14nm products, as demand outstrips available supply. If this sounds familiar, it is because the same thing happened this time last year, and lasted for quite some time. The only silver lining is that the 10nm mobile Ice Lake parts seem to be in good supply and we should still see laptops sporting the new chip before the end of the year.
Hopefully we will get more encouraging news for you soon.
These latest musings come via Digitimes, which claims that murmurings in the supply chain point towards another chip shortage for Intel, with manufacturing capacity falling short of what's demanded.
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Limited fab capacity? Let’s make the IGP bigger so the die is larger and yields go down! GJ, Intel.
So, how is it after years of PC sales declining we have a shortage of X86 CPUs, but in the past with PC sales at their peak, we had no such things?
The Internet of Shite and phones … plus we’ve hit a point where the design and production is so incredibly complex that small problems cascade into huge supply issues. Add in a larger volume of international sales that didn’t exist at this level before too.
well you said it yourself, its a declining market. why would they increase production capacity on a shrinking business? the reason the supply is low right now is for a couple reasons. jeremy’s answer covers most of it. iot, phones, embedded, console, all take a lot of fab space. and over seas markets are huge whereas even 10 years ago america and europe WERE the world market basically
pent up demand because intel held everything above 4 cores on HEDT
larger chips too. since process tech is slowing down you now have 2 choices. you use the same process as before but make it twice as large (intel) or use a smaller process with twice as many patterns and it takes twice as long, with worse yields (amd). neither are great solutions.
no one wants to invest more in 14nm, 12nm, etc production if they are just gonna scrap those machines when they finally get the new processes ironed out. we need EUV or whatever is gonna move things forward, but until they actually figure out what that is they arent going to invest in more fab capacity. intel will extend what they have and try to improve efficiency\production\yields but they wont build any new facilities that will just be obsolete in a year or 2.
amd are basically taking up whatever 7nm space apple leave them i would think. i wouldnt be surprised if the differences between 7nm lp and 7nmlpp are just in the libraries\masks and apple is probably just taking the center of every wafer. apple probably bankrolled the 7nm process to be honest in exchange for the choice center of every wafer. then tsmc had all this extra 7nm area to sell and amd worked their way into it. and if amd cpus move up to premium status and apple helped them get there then i guess amd sort of owe apple a favor right?
intel dont have somebody else that needs millions of very tiny socs at insane profit margins to finance the 10nm process. it doesnt really make sense for anything but laptops right now, at least not at the relaxed density of the current stuff.
intel need to get sunnycove onto 14nm and make the igpu a seperate die and have it made at samsung and sell enthusiast skus without it. and try to keep the clocks high.
amd should stay the course and work on ipc gains. they need to hault the core mania before it bites them. that 16 core sounded good for PR and pounding intel but its too much. it wastes too many good cores. 12 is enough and more should be on hedt. what amd need to do now is improve single core speed. core counts dont need to rise any higher than now until at least some advancements get made in software ( at least for non workstation etc)
Thanks for the replies. Both of you.