AMD CEO Lisa Su is signaling that the company’s PC graphics cards will remain in short supply for the rest of the year.
In an interview with Barron’s, Su was asked about AMD’s efforts to respond to the ongoing semiconductor shortage. The company currently relies on Taiwan’s TSMC to manufacture both CPU processors and graphics chips. However, AMD’s original attempts to forecast the demand were admittedly off the mark, according to Su.
“We make many of these decisions years in advance,” she said. “But what’s happened over the past 12 months is that the demand has far exceeded even our aggressive expectations.”
Although the company has been trying to boost the manufacturing capacity, consumers should brace for the shortages to remain a problem throughout 2021, and maybe even into next year.
“For this year, it’s going to continue to be quite tight,” Su added. “I think going into 2022, it will depend a little bit on the dynamics of the market overall.” (Nvidia also expects the demand to exceed supplies throughout much of this year.)
As Su points out, orders for chip production are placed years in advance, meaning it’ll take some time for TSMC to create the extra capacity. The other factor is how cryptocurrency mining sent demand for GPUs skyrocketing in 2021. However, it remains unclear whether the same demand will sustain itself as the Ethereum cryptocurrency prepares to phase out GPU-based mining.
In the meantime, you can find some stock for AMD’s Radeon 6000 graphics cards on Amazon and Newegg. But you’ll have to pay inflated prices, which can double the normal cost.
The good news is that AMD seems to have resolved the supply shortages for its Ryzen 5000 CPU processors. You can currently find the 5600X, 5800X, and 5900X in stock at Amazon at normal pricing.
In her interview with Barron’s, Su added: “We’re certainly bringing on more capacity every quarter, so you’ll see more output every quarter for sure.”
