Chip Shortages Could Continue Well into 2022, Predicts NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang

[btarunr]

In his Q2-FY2022 Results call, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang commented that he expects the ongoing chip supply situation to remain bad for the most part of 2022. "Meanwhile, we have and are securing pretty significant long-term supply commitments as we expand into all these different markets initiatives that we've set ourselves up for. And I so I think—I would expect that we will see a supply contained environment for the vast majority of next year is my guess at the moment," he said.

His comments are telling, as NVIDIA relies heavily on cutting edge silicon fabrication nodes for its logic products, such as GPUs, HPC processors, and vehicle SoCs. 2022 will see NVIDIA introduce its "Lovelace" graphics architecture, powering the GeForce RTX 40-series GPUs; as well as a variant powering next-generation HPC processors. The company is looking to design its chips for TSMC's 5 nm silicon fabrication process, unless Samsung can fix its 5 nm-class foundry woes in time, and win back the company.



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[jigar2speed]

By now everyone knows, they just want to keep the pricing high in the market. Its just out right sad that no government body is probing this scam.

 

[sam_86314]

By now everyone knows, they just want to keep the pricing high in the market. Its just out right sad that no government body is probing this scam.

It's sadder that people are willing to pay these prices for these cards. I'm sure if you told someone a couple of years ago that x70 cards will start selling for upwards of $1000, they'd call you insane.

Regulation wouldn't be necessary if people knew how to vote with their wallets. If people weren't spending <$1000 on a $500 GPU, then scalping wouldn't be a thing.

Oh well, my GTX 1070 is still hanging in there. Bought it off a friend in mid-to-late 2018 for $125; money well spent I say. Looks like it'll be my main card for several more years to come.

On a related note, I hope everyone is noticing that the GPU price tiers have been creeping up in the last seven years. The GTX 970 had an MSRP of $349, the GTX 1070 $379, and the RTX 2070 $499 (RTX 3070 is still $499).

What's to stop NVIDIA (and potentially AMD) from jacking up the MSRPs when the shortage is over? They now know how much people are willing to pay for their products. What if the 4000 series has no sub-$500 cards?

 

[TheDeeGee]

It's why i upgraded to a CPU with an iGPU again, just incase my 1070 dies.

 

[sam_86314]

It's why i upgraded to a CPU with an iGPU again, just incase my 1070 dies.

I've managed to get a couple of cards for decent prices that I could swap to if my 1070 dies. I got an RX 460 for $72 just before all of this nonsense and an R9 280 and GTX 750 Ti for $50 each a few months ago.

And of course, my old GTX 780 is currently going unused, so that's probably prolonging its life.

 

[Chrispy_]

Excuse to manufacture only high-proft-margin flagship parts could contine well into 2022, Predicts man who benefits from only selling high-profit-marging flagship parts"

The fact we haven't seen a 3050, or replacement for the 1030 yet is pretty poor, and When Nvidia restarted production on the 1050Ti that wasn't really what people waiting for graphics cards had in mind...

 

[Rithsom]

On a related note, I hope everyone is noticing that the GPU price tiers have been creeping up in the last seven years. The GTX 970 had an MSRP of $349, the GTX 1070 $379, and the RTX 2070 $499 (RTX 3070 is still $499).

What's to stop NVIDIA (and potentially AMD) from jacking up the MSRPs when the shortage is over? They now know how much people are willing to pay for their products. What if the 4000 series has no sub-$500 cards?

Well, the good news is that I think price-to-performance should soon return to what it was in 2016 and stay there, at least. By that I mean we should expect GTX 1070 performance to drop back to around $379. The ongoing milking by Ngreedia and AMgreeD would become too obvious if they kept the current 2012-era price/perf going too far into the future.

I know that we should be seeing price/perf improvements like we were always used to seeing, but the future does not look promising in that regard...

 

[BSim500]

It's sadder that people are willing to pay these prices for these cards. I'm sure if you told someone a couple of years ago that x70 cards will start selling for upwards of $1000, they'd call you insane. Regulation wouldn't be necessary if people knew how to vote with their wallets.

Unfortunately, gamers have all the self control of Steven Seagal at a burger stand...

It's why i upgraded to a CPU with an iGPU again, just incase my 1070 dies.

I have a spare GTX 1650 Super than I was planning to sell when prices spiked all the way to £300 (double MSRP), but instead I'm definitely keeping that as a permanent backup.

 

[Dragokar]

Was it the real Jensen or the CGI Jensen?

 

[P4-630]

Nvidia has not had any money from me in the past 2 years with those absurd prices.
Still using my 2070 Super for now.

 

[Vayra86]

Regulation wouldn't be necessary if people knew how to vote with their wallets.

I love this argument against regulation. IF people knew. People generally don't know. People are generally too stupid or too drawn to something to care about common sense. And other people are smart enough to abuse those people.

Conclusion: you need regulation. And that goes for everything. Checks and balances, because humanity is too greedy and/or stupid to exercise self restraint, and has created systems that try their damnest best to kill any restraint you do have. Its the whole reason capitalism has taken such flight and ran way out of control. We're on a road to self destruction without regulation. The examples of this are everywhere in recent history.

 

[Chrispy_]

Nvidia has not had any money from me in the past 2 years with those absurd prices.
Still using my 2070 Super for now.

The don't care about your money because the people who are buying their cards are paying them far more than you would.
This is the sad state of supply and demand

 

[stimpy88]

This is nothing more than a scam to increase prices. We have only the media to tell us of "shortages" and who is buying them...

 

[R0H1T]

Was it the real Jensen or the CGI Jensen?

Real Jensen with CGI money

 

[Kohl Baas]

(RTX 3070 is still $499)

Well, technically, but chip-wise it is what a x60 Ti used to be. So with regatds to nomenclature, the whole RTX30 series was shifted to keep the good MSRP.

 

[LFaWolf]

Lovelace is coming in 2022? I thought that is just a rumor and has not been confirmed.

 

[watzupken]

I feel the shortage is particularly bad because of multiple factors happening at the same time,
1. Nvidia cut supply of Turing cards too soon - This will have an impact because Nvidia supplies the most dedicated GPUs.
2. Samsung fab issues - Initial batch of Nvidia GPU is the Ga102, which is a complex chip with yields expected to be low. I believe the yields at Samsung may be even lower at the beginning, thus, resulting in a trickling of GPUs out the fab,
3. Low prices - At USD 699 and approx 30% faster than the highest end Turing card, 2080 Ti, it was certainly a great deal, causing a big spike in demand,
4. COVID measures hit hard globally - Basically compounding to the issue with point 2,
5. Mining activities spike - Self explanatory
6. Scalpers scooping up most cards - I left it as the last point because usually scalping activities can't last long as supply picks up. But in this case, the supply remains crap, and because of miners desperate for GPUs, this made it even more attractive for scalpers to continue their activities since miners are more willing to pay for GPUs

So will supply and demand meet anytime soon, I don't think it will. The supposed supply to market likely fed to miners and scalpers, more than to consumers wanting to get a card for gaming purpose. I feel the situation is pretty much the same with same PS5 where Sony feels that demand is extremely high and they sold millions of unit. But how many of the consoles are actually on a gamer's TV console, and not in a warehouse or home of someone hoarding them for scalping purpose? I may be wrong as it is just my opinion, but considering the market still have a lot of GPUs if you look around, its just that they are absurdly priced.

 

[Jomale]

Intel Ponte Vecchio: HPC-Chips SMCs in N5// Xe-Link-Tiles @TSMC in N7
Intel Arc Gaming-GPUs upto 32 Xe-Cores @TSMC in N6

That's why.

 

[TheUn4seen]

Why wouldn't the shortages continue? Everyone's learning from the HDD industry, their seemingly continuous stream of disasters which drive up prices and yet the HDD companies noted highest ever profits during those disasters.

I grew up in a socialist republic. In the '70s and '80s the whole economy worked on what is known as "planned shortages". It's actually a great way of ensuring 100% sales and prices going beyond "what the market will bear" - desperate people will pay a lot more than the product is worth under normal circumstances. Since computer parts are not a basic necessity there is less chance of government intervention so the manufacturers can keep this thing going for probably a few more years.

 

[dir_d]

The Shortage hasn't been too bad in the last couple months on the Nvidia side, especially with that last giant Best buy drop of all FE cards. On the AMD side its just terrible, I would suspect that AMD has produced maybe 1/3 or even 1/4 of the cards Nvidia has put out during this whole shortage.

 

[Rhurba]

It's a scam. It's all a scam and the so called industry "leaders" have caught up to it. AMD and nVidia profits have gone to record highs. How could they do that if there was a shortage of parts? How could they do that when they could not manufacture products? They are manufacturing but lying about supply just to keep prices high. Strategy is working so far = look at their profits.

The main reason this is happening is because there are retards in this world that actually pay 1000$ for a 3070...or 700$ for a rebranded RX5700 and so on. As long as there are those willing to pay so much for so little, more than 80% will suffer. Exactly the situation in the world today, where 80% of the wealth of the planet is in the hands of 20% of population. They dictate the market while the majority suffers or...goes to the bank to make a credit in order to buy a graphics card...for 1000$ (+20% interest).

The world has gone to shit. Somebody stop this planet, I want to get off!

I don't think this will ever go back to normal. Sad... I hope I am wrong though.

 

[Dr. Dro]

Lovelace is coming in 2022? I thought that is just a rumor and has not been confirmed.

If you look closely, NVIDIA releases new architectures at a two-year cadence with few exceptions (niche products or half-steps), so there is a good chance. Unless there's a design fault internally, even with low yields the processor can tape out and be released. I would argue the market is actually good for releasing low-yield, high-cost, high-margin products at the moment, as people are... well, paying anything to get a graphics card. Since their unified shader models (modern CUDA GPU) began, we've gone through:

2006 - Tesla (8800 series, 9800 series, GTS 250)
2008 - Tesla 2 (GTX 200 series)
2010 - Fermi (GTX 400 and 500 series)
2012 - Kepler (GTX 600 and 700 series, Titan 1st generation)
2013 - Maxwell 1 (GTX 750 Ti)
2014 - Maxwell 2 (GTX 900 series, Titan 2nd generation)
2016 - Pascal (GTX 10 series, Titan 3rd generation)
2017 - Volta (Titan V)
2018 - Turing (RTX 20 series, Titan RTX)
2020 - Ampere (RTX 30 series)

Should be relatively safe to assume that we'll see Lovelace, and a potential return of Titan (maybe with a spin of the Hopper processor) next year.

 

[Fourstaff]

Never let a good crisis go to waste, as the saying goes. With TSMC's dominance in fab and Samsung floundering, everyone is fighting for the same few lines to manufacture their latest and greatest. No amount of legislation will solve this problem, since TSMC is already actively expanding their fabs.