AMD's Lisa Su says chip shortage will ease in second half of 2022, downplays crypto's...

[midian182]

A hot potato: It's the question we all want to know: when is the global chip shortage going to improve? Most people in and out of the tech industry have their own opinion, and now Lisa Su has joined a growing consensus that says the nightmare will end, or at least get better, in the second half of 2022.

Speaking to Kara Swisher and CNBC tech reporter Jon Fortt at the Code Conference in Beverly Hills, California, the AMD boss said that the first half of 2022 will be 'likely tight' in terms of chip supply, but shortages should become less severe in the second half of the year.

"We've always gone through cycles of ups and downs, where demand has exceeded supply, or vice versa," Su said. "This time, it's different."

"It might take, you know, 18 to 24 months to put on a new plant, and in some cases even longer than that. These investments were started perhaps a year ago."

Graphics card prices are on the rise once again

There have been several factors behind the chip shortages, the main one being the pandemic, which not only caused supply and manufacturing issues, but also saw demand for products such as PCs and consoles skyrocket.

"The pandemic has just taken demand to a new level," Su said.

Su added that crypto mining hasn't had much of an effect on the supply of AMD's graphics cards, calling it "a pretty volatile space" that shouldn't be a focus for the company. It's not too surprising to hear such statements from Su. Earlier this month, AMD, which has said it won't copy Nvidia by adding mining limiters to its products, denied prioritizing mining graphics cards over gaming; the Radeon 6000 series has yet to break into the Steam survey's main GPU list, and there had been rumors of a mining card using AMD's Navi 12 GPU.

There's also China's recent clampdown on crytpo, in which it declared all transactions using the virtual currency illegal, making crypto mining cards less appealing to manufacturers.

"We are trying really hard to get more products to gamers; I get so many 'Dear Lisa, can you help me get a gaming card?'" Su said. "At the end of the day we're building for sort of consumer applications, and that's where the focus is."

It's been a busy week for Su. Joe Biden recently added her to the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST), and she became the first women to win the Robert N. Noyce Medal from the Institute of Electrical & Electronics Engineer.

Nvidia also believes the chip shortage will alleviate in the middle or latter half of 2022, as does analyst firm IDC. That would mean we have around a year to wait until we can upgrade to a new Ampere or RDNA 2 card without needing a lot of luck/money/both. But many are skeptical about this prediction, especially given how much time will be required before supply can meet demand. Not to mention all the new problems that are arising.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/91456-lisa-su-chip-shortage-ease-second-half-2022.html

 

[Dimitriid]

If we add some sanity to her optimism aimed at shareholders (And imho, we always should) this probably means realistically, 2023.

And at that point I seriously doubt Nvidia won't have a 4000 series out which means AMD will have a new RDNA series out to complete making their 6000 series basically a lost generation: first time in many years they actually could match and surpass Nvidia in raster performance just lost: nothing but a foot note of cards only reviewers got to use for testing purposes and nobody actually owned in any kind of significant numbers.

But yeah even mid 2022 is far too late: the PC gaming market won't survive unchanged.

 

[bviktor]

She's not downplaying anything, it's the media and the conspiracy theorists upplaying the stupid miners' part in all this. It's the darn scalpers, not the miners.

 

[Revolution 11]

I don't buy 2022 at all. Construction is just starting on new fab sites. Even when the buildings and pipes and all the physical infrastructure is done, the clean room space still needs to be cleaned/decontaminated and sealed. Then the fab instruments need to be installed, which could take months by themselves. You need to calibrate those instruments to make sure that they are ready for production.

The fab probably has a few validation runs before mass production can begin. The mass production itself takes several weeks from end to end. Then the products need to be shipped.

To me it sounds like mid 2023 is the earliest that new production will go fully online. Add several more months for shipping and integration into GPUs that are actually on store shelves.

Prices might still drop before that because a lot of companies are buying in excess of what they need for chips. That supply constraint will ease but it has nothing to do with new fabs.

 

[Theinsanegamer]

She's not downplaying anything, it's the media and the conspiracy theorists upplaying the stupid miners' part in all this. It's the darn scalpers, not the miners.

Are mindfactory's sales numbers a conspiracy theory too now? What about AMD and nvidia's income reports? Because Nvidia is selling a LOT fo GPUs right now, and few are showing up on steam, or in gamer's PCs. They gotta be going somewhere.....

 

[Watzupken]

I think Lisa was very optimistic that things will turn around in the second half of this year, and now it seems that goal post have moved. So what it means is, nobody can predict the future. As long as COVID situation still persists, and people rushing out to buy hardware, prices will always remain high, and supply always not enough.

 

[George Keech]

She's not downplaying anything, it's the media and the conspiracy theorists upplaying the stupid miners' part in all this. It's the darn scalpers, not the miners.

I definitely dont think its just one thing, its a perfect storm of. Mining, Scalpers, lack of resources for production, increased usage of Microprocessors, more people working from home feeding into the previous. Getting a cheap laptop in the UK just before the first lockdown was near impossible.

 

[Achaios]

Depends what's Su's definition of "ease".

For all we know, we could get to pay 2.5XMSRP for a new GPU down from 3XMSRP for the same GPU.

 

[Kosmoz]

If we add some sanity to her optimism aimed at shareholders (And imho, we always should) this probably means realistically, 2023.

And at that point I seriously doubt Nvidia won't have a 4000 series out which means AMD will have a new RDNA series out to complete making their 6000 series basically a lost generation: first time in many years they actually could match and surpass Nvidia in raster performance just lost: nothing but a foot note of cards only reviewers got to use for testing purposes and nobody actually owned in any kind of significant numbers.

But yeah even mid 2022 is far too late: the PC gaming market won't survive unchanged.

They did however sold more this gen than any other generation, however you want to look at this... It's not like they sold less GPUs.

The perfect storm of issues as someone said above, plus that AMD has CPUs, consoles and GPUs all made on the same node at TSMC and the fact that GPUs are the last in order of wafer allocation PLUS nvidia making their GPUs at Samsung where they have almost free capacity to make as much as they want = all this negative outcome for RDNA2, from our (customers) pov, not AMD's pov.

It's easy to outsell when you outproduce the competition almost 10 to 1, while being the bigger dog (nvidia), having 10 times more wafers to allocate on Samsung than on TSMC...

These are the facts, yet people still blame AMD. The only thing AMD could have done was to have less console allocation and more GPUs, but these plans are made about 2 years in advance, so at that time 2018-2019, how was anyone supposed to know what will happen with the world, in 2020-2021?

It's easy to blame and to ignore all these facts. AMD is still smaller than both intel and nvidia while fighting both and yet people still ask more miracles from them, like they did not do enough of those already in the past 3 years. So much ignorance...

 

[RudyBob]

I think she is bought and paid for

 

[Dimitriid]

It's easy to blame and to ignore all these facts. AMD is still smaller than both intel and nvidia while fighting both and yet people still ask more miracles from them, like they did not do enough of those already in the past 3 years. So much ignorance...

It's not "asking for a miracle" to see very clearly that the only ways buying ati has paid of for them are precisely their top priorities: consoles and APUs

In fact I wouldn't necessarily be opposed for AMD to focus more on than because of everything you said: they're too small to over-extend themselves into the consumer GPU market and have been for years.

Now I can concede that there's not a lot than they can do about a purchase that was made so many years ago, but I don't think is "ignorant" to question their long term strategies like ati and where it is today specially because they could decide to just focus on what they do best instead of this impossible battle against Nvidia and soon intel too.

 

[Kosmoz]

Now I can concede that there's not a lot than they can do about a purchase that was made so many years ago, but I don't think is "ignorant" to question their long term strategies like ati and where it is today specially because they could decide to just focus on what they do best instead of this impossible battle against Nvidia and soon intel too.

You can question them moving forward, especially since now they can fight for the win with RDNA3.

I will question them myself from now on and I expect them to give their GPU division more love than in the past.

If AMD does not do that, I won't defend them (I don't have a blind allegiance), because the circumstances have changed since 2018, so the old excuses don't work anymore going forward.

 

[scavengerspc]

I think she is bought and paid for

Of course, she is. All you did was describe every President\CEO of every company in the world.
Sheesh man.

 

[Beerfloat]

I think she made the right choices given the hand she was dealt. First priority was to keep the console manufacturers happy. Second to capitalize on Zen 3's rare advantage in CPU performance by allocating enough wagers to get a foot in the door. And third recognize RDNA2 is second grade compared to Ampere so pretty much let it die on the vine. Hopeful that RDNA3 will be worth fabbing.

 

[RudyBob]

Of course, she is. All you did was describe every President\CEO of every company in the world.
Sheesh man.

Not every. And sheesh and schong to you

 

[scavengerspc]

Not every. And sheesh and schong to you

What I'm saying is there isn't a company on the planet that didn't throw as much money as they could to get the leaders they want. And once hired, that President\CEO bends over backwards to support the company they now work for. We all do it from one side or the other.

 

[kiwigraeme]

Dear Lisa,
A lot of my fellow commentators on techspot can not get a GPU at MRP can you help them out ?

 

[Starscream07]

If we add some sanity to her optimism aimed at shareholders (And imho, we always should) this probably means realistically, 2023.

And at that point I seriously doubt Nvidia won't have a 4000 series out which means AMD will have a new RDNA series out to complete making their 6000 series basically a lost generation: first time in many years they actually could match and surpass Nvidia in raster performance just lost: nothing but a foot note of cards only reviewers got to use for testing purposes and nobody actually owned in any kind of significant numbers.

But yeah even mid 2022 is far too late: the PC gaming market won't survive unchanged.

Aah, I'd be worried if only there were any good games any more lol. Idk the pandemic has slowed it down way too much.

 

[Biostud]

Maybe miners are not targeting AMD GPUs, but since the scarcity of nvidia GPUs, then it pushes the amd GPU prices up too..

I would like to build a new computer but with these GPU prices, I'm not going to. So the problem for both Intel and AMD is that people are less likely to to buy a new CPU if they can't get a new GPU as well.