Thursday, December 29th 2022
AMD Said to be Following NVIDIA with Logistics Center in Taiwan
Just over a month ago, news broke that NVIDIA is planning to move its logistics center from Hong Kong to Taiwan and it now looks like AMD is getting ready to follow suit. The news is coming via Taiwan's United Daily News (UDN) and the paper claims that AMD will be setting up its logistics center in the Farglory free trade zone area in the Dayuan district of Taoyuan, which is next to Taiwan's main international airport. Currently companies like ASML and Asus operate inside the free trade zone and Farglory is currently in the last phase of an expansion of the free trade zone, which should be finalised sometime early in 2023. As such, there should be plenty of space for both NVIDIA and AMD to set up their logistics centers there.
The move for AMD doesn't seem to make as much sense as that of NVIDIA, as AMD's main graphics card partners, which should be Sapphire and XFX (Pine Group), are Hong Kong based companies. That said, AMD still has PowerColor, ASRock, Asus, Gigabyte and MSI in Taiwan, but only PowerColor is an exclusive AMD partner. This does of course not take motherboards or servers into account, where its Taiwanese partners are key. On the other hand, just as NVIDIA, AMD produces its GPUs at TSMC, so for products that doesn't end up in the PRC, it would make more sense to have them go straight to a logistics center in Taiwan, rather than having to ship them out to Hong Kong and then back to Taiwan again. According to UDN it's apparently also cheaper for AMD to shop goods directly from Taiwan to the PRC, as it's apparently quite costly to ship via Hong Kong. Another reason is of course the ongoing trade war between the US and the PRC, which could lead to future issues for both AMD and NVIDIA. Hong Kong has also slowly lost its importance as a key center in the electronics business, with Taiwan and Singapore having become more important hubs, according to UDN.
Sources:
United Daily News, via @dnystedt
The move for AMD doesn't seem to make as much sense as that of NVIDIA, as AMD's main graphics card partners, which should be Sapphire and XFX (Pine Group), are Hong Kong based companies. That said, AMD still has PowerColor, ASRock, Asus, Gigabyte and MSI in Taiwan, but only PowerColor is an exclusive AMD partner. This does of course not take motherboards or servers into account, where its Taiwanese partners are key. On the other hand, just as NVIDIA, AMD produces its GPUs at TSMC, so for products that doesn't end up in the PRC, it would make more sense to have them go straight to a logistics center in Taiwan, rather than having to ship them out to Hong Kong and then back to Taiwan again. According to UDN it's apparently also cheaper for AMD to shop goods directly from Taiwan to the PRC, as it's apparently quite costly to ship via Hong Kong. Another reason is of course the ongoing trade war between the US and the PRC, which could lead to future issues for both AMD and NVIDIA. Hong Kong has also slowly lost its importance as a key center in the electronics business, with Taiwan and Singapore having become more important hubs, according to UDN.
12 Comments on AMD Said to be Following NVIDIA with Logistics Center in Taiwan
So will China be a ghost country soon ?
Then you have PC Partner, which owns Zotac, Gainward and some other brands. Sapphire is the only one of these that doesn't appear to be owned by another company behind the scenes and might be small enough to be able to move, but how do you get work permits for 100+ staffmembers in another country?
Stop the geo-political FUD posting.
This is a tech site not a political platform.
1. A company the size of AMD or Nvidia must have exactly one logistics center for the entire world
2. Each and every shipment of materials and end products must go through this logistics center.
Violà, we have met the industry requirements for supply chain fragility!
Hong Kong's been getting f-ed up the last couple of years.
You can't just up and move 100+ staff members and their families to another country.
Taiwan won't grant them all work permits, as Taiwan has quite peculiar laws pertaining to companies hiring foreign labour.
Even if Sapphire was to meet the revenue limits, they would need to hire several times more local staff for each foreign staff.
Jokes aside. Somehow I have a feeling that Sapphire movement to Taiwan will not be a problem and nor for the workers.