And why can't/won't anyone explain what's causing it? Is TSMC stretched too thin? But then aren't nvidia chips being produced by Samsung? Is there a raw materials shortage? Aren't they producing to full capacity because of covid? Can't they export all the parts because of covid? All they parrot is "massive demand". Pascal had massive demand and it wasn't a problem.
There's a number of factors.
- TSMC is basically fully booked from what I understand, and is even stretching themselves to try and help out the automotive industry.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co Ltd (TSMC) is "expediting" auto-related products through its wafer fabs and reallocating wafer capacity, the company said on Thursday, amid a global shortage of auto chips.
www.reuters.com
- Shortages in raw materials as well as issues in the packaging supply chain lead to production bottlenecks
The past two months have seen semiconductors suddenly become mainstream news as multiple automakers raised concerns about supply shortages while trying to ramp production back up.
www.argusmedia.com
Innovative business models emerge, but so does possibility of consolidation.
semiengineering.com
- The water shortages caused by the drought in Taiwan are potentially hampering production
Tech Wire Asia is an independent tech news website that covers enterprise and technology in Asia
techwireasia.com
- Demand for computing products skyrocketed with the global COVID-19 pandemic
"With the pandemic, demand for cell phones, laptops and other work-at-home devices and increased use of the internet have put pressure on fabs to increase the number of chips they are delivering for these products. The global automotive industry predicted that demand for cars would fall during the pandemic, so it reduced its orders for semiconductors chips used in vehicle safety, control, emissions and driver information systems. The auto industry has restarted production but is now
faced with a shortage of semiconductor chips."
A small and shrinking number of the world’s computer chips are made in the U.S.
www.scientificamerican.com
With so many of AMD's products utilizing TSMC's 7nm node, it makes sense that they're struggling to put out a robust supply of one particular product.
- Splitting the chips between both new consoles, as well as Zen 2/Zen 3 CPUs, and the 5000 and 6000 series of GPUs
- Manufacturing/production shortages mentioned above
- Increased demand due to work-from-home, a larger interest in gaming due to quarantine, and products that are arguably top-tier (CPUs that beat Intel's current offerings in both single and multi-core in most instances, and GPUs that trade blows with Nvidia's Ampere line in terms of rasterization performance)
Not to mention the bots snatching up stock as soon as it's available and miners buying in large quantities. I haven't seen anything talking about AMD selling directly to miners like we've seen rumored about Nvidia, but it wouldn't surprise me if that's happening as well.