Tuesday, September 28th 2021
AMD Expects Chip Shortage to Improve Next Year, According to CEO Lisa Su
Finally some potentially good news, as AMD's CEO Lisa Su is bringing hope that the current chip shortage situation might improve over the next 18 to 24 months according to a new piece on CNBC. She's expecting new chip fabs to have come online by then, although no details were mentioned, one would presume it involves TSMC in AMD's case.
Lisa Su is quoted saying "We've always gone through cycles of ups and downs, where demand has exceeded supply, or vice versa, this time, it's different." "The pandemic has just taken demand to a new level". This isn't exactly breaking news by now, but it also seems like the demand for computers has reached its peak and is now plateauing ahead of what will likely be a drop in sales come next year, but that doesn't mean the demand for chips will go down. Lisa Su is also expecting further consolidation in the industry, which has its upsides and downsides, but her take on it is that "if you want to do something very large for the industry, you know, scale is important." AMD should know this better than most companies, since they've scaled their business from the brink of bankruptcy to where they are today.
Source:
CNBC
Lisa Su is quoted saying "We've always gone through cycles of ups and downs, where demand has exceeded supply, or vice versa, this time, it's different." "The pandemic has just taken demand to a new level". This isn't exactly breaking news by now, but it also seems like the demand for computers has reached its peak and is now plateauing ahead of what will likely be a drop in sales come next year, but that doesn't mean the demand for chips will go down. Lisa Su is also expecting further consolidation in the industry, which has its upsides and downsides, but her take on it is that "if you want to do something very large for the industry, you know, scale is important." AMD should know this better than most companies, since they've scaled their business from the brink of bankruptcy to where they are today.
45 Comments on AMD Expects Chip Shortage to Improve Next Year, According to CEO Lisa Su
We just need to count the number of units sold. And lo and behold: there are many more computer sales this year than before. Work-from-home means that a large number of people deck'd out their home offices with computer equipment of all kinds. Under these conditions, an increase in demand (and therefore: lower supply) is just natural.
Musk's sentiments align with Su's.
In 2 years from now I would hope so. Everyone mark your calendars.
it's affecting a lot of other industries also (Tesla as someone else mentioned, for example)
Yes facts are prevalent, sales are up Soo.
On point, good news, bring it up.
The problem isnt that manufacturers slowed down production, as some of you might think, its that the demand has outgrown the supply production capability. How many chip forges are being built or planning? Last I checked, and I am prolly wrong, 5 were going up, 3 in Arizona alone. What does that tell you?
If you follow, or are in, businesses that deals with other business then you'd be aware. And it's not like these agreements can say "oops, we need to raise prices. Tehee" they are often set before equipment is delviered
You know, like the following:
More chips are being sold right now. Period. Its pretty freaking obvious.
We can look at competitors to see if AMD has "stolen" the market. And...
Nope, Intel is also up. So if both AMD and Intel are up (despite Intel cutting prices on their chips), that means more chips are being sold.
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EDIT: We can also see how many wafers are being consumed (aka: the "inputs" to the fab-labs)
Oh, look at that. Samsung is #1. In 2015, 2534000 wafers-per-month was Samsung's capacity, which was 15.5% of the world's capacity. That's a world-capacity of 16-million wafers/month. In Dec 2020, Samsung's capacity was still #1 with 3060000 wafers-per-month, but only 14.7% capacity. That's a world capacity of 20-million wafers/month.
So the world used 25% more wafers in 2020 than in 2015, and therefore made 25% more mm^2 worth of chips.
This is clearly a demand problem. Supplies / production are up 25% on a mm^2 basis, and that doesn't even count the advancement of 12nm to 7nm (!!!), which doubles the number of transistor per wafer.
ir.amd.com/news-events/press-releases/detail/1014/amd-reports-second-quarter-2021-financial-results