Everyone and their mother expected NVIDIA to announce - if not a SUPER refresh to their existing graphics cards with increased memory sizes - at least the RTX 3080 Ti. That card surfaced as a planned NVIDIA counter to AMD's preemptive pricing of $999 on its RX 6900 XT graphics card (which to be fair, is in itself as abundant a card as unicorns this side of the galaxy). GamersNexus reported NVIDIA partners' comments on the indefinite postponement of the RTX 3080 Ti and possible SUPER derivatives of the RTX 30-series lineup. It's being said that NVIDIA decided (smartly, I would say) to ensure consistent supply of their existing lineup to sate demand, instead of dispersing its limited chip production across even more product lines.

This would result, I have no doubt, on NVIDIA only having even more SKUs out of stock than they currently do. Considering the market's current state of mind in regards to NVIDIA's lineup, this seems like the most sensible decision possible. TechPowerUp has in the meantime confirmed this information with NVIDIA partners themselves.

GPU supply has been one of the most interesting things this year. With a huge demand for the new GPU generations like NVIDIA's Ampere and AMD's RDNA 2 "Big Navi" graphics cards, everyone is trying to grab a card for themselves. Besides the huge demand, there is also a big problem. The supply of these GPUs is just too low to satisfy the demand, driving up the prices, and increasing the scarcity of them. Companies like NVIDIA have their priorities set: all of the major production will go for the data center expansion and data center customers. However, even that plan is proving not to be good enough.

The scarcity of GPUs has now hit data centers, with NVIDIA unable to satisfy the demand for its A100 GPUs designed for high-performance computing. "It is going to take several months to catch up some of the demand," said Ian Buck, vice president of Accelerated Computing Business Unit at Nvidia. That is an indicator of just how huge the demand for these accelerators is. With the recent company announcement of A100 GPU with 80 GB memory, partners expect to have the first cards in their systems in the first half of 2021. That means that this situation and inadequate supply will hopefully resolve sometime around that timeframe.

The current widespread shortages on anything gaming-related (be it gaming consoles or the latest GPUs from both NVIDIA and AMD) are a well-known quantity by now. However, it now seems that NVIDIA's shortages aren't just the result of "outstanding, unprecedented demand", aided by scalping practices, but also from wafer and component shortages. NVIDIA's CFO Colette Kress at Credit Suisse 24th Annual Technology Conference expanded on these issues, saying that "We do have supply constraints and our supply constraints do expand past what we are seeing in terms of wafers and silicon, but yes some constraints are in substrates and components. We continue to work during the quarter on our supply and we believe though that demand will probably exceed supply in Q4 for overall gaming."

There was no further information on exactly which components are experiencing shortages. An educated guess might pin some of these issues on the exotic GDDR6X memory subsystem on high-tier Ampere graphics cards, but there could be other factors at play here. If NVIDIA did underestimate demand for its Ampere graphics cards, though, that will make it that much harder for the company to ramp up orders (and hence production) with Samsung - semiconductor manufacturing works with several months of lead time between orders and their actual fulfillment.

XBOX boss Phil Spencer recently warned interested parties on the new Microsoft Xbox family of devices that supply shortages may not be so short-lived as we would've hoped. More recently, XBOX chief Financial Officer Tim Stuart said he believes that demand will continue to outstrip supply well after the holiday season and at least until April 2021 - a point at which Microsoft might just be able to match demand with its supply.

"I think we'll continue to see supply shortages as we head into the post-holiday quarter, so Microsoft's Q3, calendar Q1," said Xbox chief financial officer Tim Stuart, Speaking at the Jefferies Interactive Entertainment Virtual Conference (transcribed by Seeking Alpha). "And then when we get to Q4, all of our supply chain continuing to go full speed heading into kind of the pre-summer months. And that's where I start to - I expect to see a little bit of the demand - the supply profile, meeting the demand profile." Microsoft's fiscal Q4 runs from April through June. Whether or not that's true, one thing we can now for sure: while supply isn't enough to satisfy demand, we'll see scalpers continuing to sell what consoles and graphics cards they managed to snag for outrageous prices. Don't cede: vote with your wallet and don't give them a pat on the back with your hard-earned money.

The supply of NVIDIA's newly announced GeForce RTX Ampere lineup has been quite controversial since the beginning. Demand for the new GeForce RTX 3080 and 3090 GPUs has been rather high and NVIDIA experienced big "demand issues" as the CEO Jensen Huang says. The company didn't expect such high demand and thus hasn't stocked up the chips for that many orders. NVIDIA's AIBs have also seen this problem with GPU demand, as it is too high in ratio to supply. As more chips are manufactured, we can expect this problem only to settle down over time. Today, we got an interesting piece of information regarding the availability of Founders Edition (FE) GeForce RTX 3080 and RTX 3090 cards. NVIDIA has posted on the forums stating the following:

Suroosh@NVIDIAWe have heard your feedback regarding the NVIDIA online store and are working to improve the experience.

In the meantime, we will be selling our GeForce RTX 3080 and RTX 3090 Founders Edition through other partners. In the US, you can shop for Founders Edition at Best Buy - GeForce RTX 3080 and GeForce RTX 3090. In Europe, we continue to review Founders Edition fulfillment options.

Founders Edition units are limited, and more will be available in the coming weeks alongside an increasing supply of boards from our global board partners.

It's rare when a company actually responds to rumors with more than a simple "we don't comment on speculations"; however, Sony has done just that in regards to purported reduced supply of PS5 consoles on launch. There are some likely reasons for this move from Sony; for one, the rapid uptake on mainstream media following the initial Bloomberg report may have garnered a little too much attention for comfort. Consider the fact that Sony's share price fell some 3.5% following the report, however, and you can see how these rumors may have forced the company's hand to stem the bleeding.

Sony quells this rumor with extreme prejudice, too. According to the company, speaking to GamesIndustry.biz, "While we do not release details related to manufacturing, the information provided by Bloomberg is false. We have not changed the production number for PlayStation 5 since the start of mass production." That should settle things - and mean there will be 4 million more PS5s up for grab out there at launch. It was, in any event, strange that the chip inside the PS5 was having such troubling 50% yield number as was advanced by the Bloomberg report; we know that Ryzen itself has been designed by AMD with manufacturing yields and cost-reduction in mind for some time, now.

Today we have found out that Sony has reportedly cut PlayStation 5 launch supply due to bad yields of the SoC powering the console. Previously, we reported that Sony has doubled production of the new console amid high demand, where the company expected to sell 10 million units in the fiscal year. The original plan was to have around 15 million units of the new console available by March 31st, 2021. Sony has been spending a lot of resources to get as many units out to consumers, however, the bad SoC yields have held the company back significantly.

It is reported by Bloomberg that instead of the original 15 million units Sony plans to supply, there will be only 11 million of them. That represents a massive reduction of 4 million units. And you are wondering how bad the yields of the new SoC are to have that big reduction. According to the source, TSMC and Sony are seeing only 50% yields on the production run. It is reported that the yields are gradually improving but have not yet reached the level needed to have a stable supply. This represents a big problem for the company and we don't know who is to blame. TSMC has been very good at manufacturing 7 nm silicon, however, it could be bad design from AMD and Sony that is making the production difficult. We are waiting for more information.

GIGABYTE TECHNOLOGY Co. Ltd, a leading manufacturer of motherboards, graphics cards, and gaming gears, today announced three new compact power supplies: P750GM - 750 W 80 PLUS Gold certified with fully modular design, P550B - 550 W 80 PLUS Bronze certified, and P450B - 450 W 80 PLUS Bronze certified.

GIGABYTE has improved the old circuit design and adopted new high-quality materials, so that the 750-watt power supply with a length of 16-18 cm can be greatly reduced to 14 cm. The performance and stability of the power supply can also be improved in the reduced condition. The reduced-size power supply is suitable for installation in the increasingly popular small chassis, so that even small chassis can enjoy the high performance brought by the large wattage.

XMG, a well-known gaming brand for high performance laptops and PCs that operates under Schenker Technologies has announced via a Reddit post that it is facing serious constraints in AMD Ryzen 7 4800H supply. This has meant a delay for parts that were expected to be fulfilled in August, which now have an expected delivery date by late September. The company is offering a number of alternatives for users that may want to change their order in wake of the delay, including a chip downgrade (for AMD's Ryzen 4600H), a CPU manufacturer swap (to Intel's Core i7-10750H), a battery downgrade from 62Wh to 46Wh (with laptops being likely manufactured by two different ODMs in this case), or a full refund.

The company says that this has been caused, in part, by an upsurge in demand for AMD Ryzen 4800H CPUs, not only form customers, but also from some leading brands with a much more sizeable portion of the ODM market, who have apparently caught wind of the technological prowess of AMD's most recent 4000 series CPUs compared to Intel's. It can be also speculated that this supply constraint is being affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, which is still straining logistics and shipments across the globe, but also by insufficient supply to meet demand. This can be explained by the fact that most tech companies are fabless, and most semiconductor designers have to fight for TSMC's allocation for 7 nm silicon production - and there are only so many wafers that can be allocated to each company at the outset. Perhaps AMD's allocation is also favoring other renditions of their Zen silicon (ie, custom designs for the next-generation consoles and other higher-margin products).

TSMC has just recently announced that they will be building a semiconductor factory in the US, thanks to the pressure from Trump administration. The 5 nm Fab will be built in Arizona, with construction starting in 2021. It will be finished in the year 2024 when the plant will operate at a capacity of 20,000 wafers per month. This is not a high number as TSMC Fabs usually operate at a rate of 100-150K wafers per month, however, the amazing thing is the location of the Fab. The US Fab in Arizona is set to change the global landscape of the semiconductor supply chain, as per the latest report from DigiTimes Research.

Arizona is a place in the US where lots of companies are building semiconductors. Intel, Raytheon, Microchip, ON Semiconductor, VLSI, Freescale, NXP, STMicroelectronics, Honeywell, Marvel, Amkor, Philips, and Western Digital have their facilities there and Arizona can be considered one of the key places for semiconductor manufacturing in the US. With TSMC adding their manufacturing facilities to that list as well, there could be a change in the supplier ecosystem. In light of the need for TSMC 5 nm Fab, the world's leading OSAT (Outsourced Semiconductor Assembly and Test) suppliers may be encouraged to set up local production in Arizona to help TSMC with its plans. A lot of OSAT providers are headquartered in Taiwan, however, if there is a need, they are possibly going to build their manufacturing facilities in Arizona. This alone could change the way semiconductor manufacturing facilities are supplied, and the US could become a major center of OSAT providers.

GLOBALFOUNDRIES (GF ), the world's leading specialty foundry, and GlobalWafers Co., Ltd. (GWC), one of the top three silicon wafer manufacturers in the world, today announced they have signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to develop a long-term supply agreement for 300 mm silicon-on-insulator (SOI) wafers.

GWC is one of the world's leading manufacturers of 200 mm SOI wafers, and has a long and ongoing relationship with GF for supplying 200 mm SOI wafers. GWC also manufactures 300 mm SOI wafers, and under the anticipated supply agreement, GWC and GF will collaborate closely to significantly expand GWC's 300 mm SOI wafer manufacturing capacity.

"Nothing Really Ends" is the title of a song from dEUS, a Belgian "art-rock" band. And it would seem this applies all too well to the world of technology too. Intel has issued a Product Change Notification (PCN) which has changed the previously dead and buried, Haswell-era, 22 nm Pentium G3420 from its "Discontinued" status back to a worded "canceling this Product Discontinuance completely per new roadmap decision and enabling the product long term once again." Which means the Pentium G3420 will have a new lease of life, and will be available to customers until May 2020, with final shipments on December of the same year.

This is clearly an attempt from Intel to increase part availability for OEMs and system manufacturers, who have already been quoted as considering AMD due to both increases in performance and efficiency in their processors, as well as constrained supply from Intel, with giant Dell already having pointed the finger at Intel as a cause for their lower than expected revenue.

According to Nikkei, the newly established trade limitations between Japan and South Korea, could end up compromising global memory supply by simply restricting chemicals export. As the report says, Japan has limited its export of three vital chemicals (like orthophosphoric, hydrobromic and citric acid) used in semiconductor manufacturing, to South Korea.

Unlike before, a company that exports a chemical, now has to ask for a permission from the Japanese government, so it could supply the semiconductor foundries in South Korea. The end result of such move could be severely damaged global memory supply, as over 70% of DRAM and over 50% of NAND memory is manufactured in South Korea. Government processing of applications for exporting chemicals is estimated to take about three months, while the memory makers usually only hold around one of two months of extra supply for manufacturing. SK Hynix, a third biggest memory manufacturer by revenue, said that if it doesn't get enough stock of materials, it would have to halt production. Samsung is asserting the situation for now, without any elaboration on that. These events could lead to increased memory price and overall less supply.

In another episode of the "so timely considering market projections for NAND pricing" news, Toshiba and Western Digital have disclosed expected impacts following an unexpected, 13-minute power outage on June 15th, that affected the companies' joint manufacturing facilities in Yokkaichi, Japan. Western Digital announced a loss of almost 6 Exabytes of NAND production - Toshiba is expected to have lost anywhere between 6 Exabytes and 9 Exabytes themselves, since they usually have their factories working closer to full capacity. Return to standard manufacturing rates is expected to only occur by mid-July.

Damage includes impacted wafers that were being processed, the facilities, and production equipment, hence the need for an extended inoperability period to seriously assess damages and required reinvestment. 35% of the world's NAND supply is produced at this Yokkaichi Operation campus (which includes six factories and an R&D center), so this outage and NAND flash loss is likely to impact the global markets. Whether or not this is enough to move the needle from oversupply to undersupply is as of yet unknown, but it is unlikely so - although pricing changes are expected after Q3 and Q4 orders have been settled (whose pricing has already been settled and can't be subject to change). Loss of confidence in the Toshiba and Western Digital manufacturing venture, however, could help offset some of that pricing increase. Obviously, companies have insurance policies that cover them in case of such unexpected events - should they fall squarely out of the control of said companies.

ASUS at Computex 2019 showcased a myriad of products - as is usual, for one of the foremost PC hardware manufacturers. This news piece breaks down two of these products: the TUF Gaming VG27AQ monitor and the ROG STRIX 650 W Gold power supply. Starting with that which allows you to see, the TUF Gaming VG27AQ monitor features both ULMB and Adaptive Sync support (in the form of AMD's FreeSync and NVIDIA's G-Sync). Dubbed ELMB, the new feature allows the monitor to keep its Active Sync features active for super smooth gameplay, whilst enabling motion blur reduction - usually, a choice between the two technologies has to be made.

The 27" screen offers an IPS panel with a 2560 x 1440 pixel resolution, 1 ms response time and maximum 155 Hz refresh rate (Adaptive Sync works between the 40-155 Hz interval) over a DisplayPort connection (144 Hz max over HDMI). A maximum brightness of 350 cd/m² doesn't win any serious accolades, but is more than enough for gaming scenarios. Connectors stand at 2x HDMI 1.4 ports, 1x DisplayPort 1.2, and 2x USB 3.0 ports.

Intel was the historic leader in silicon manufacturing and sales from 1993 through 2016, the year it lost its lead to Samsung. The issue wasn't so much to do with Intel, but more to do with market demands at the time - if you'll remember, it was the time of booming DRAM pricing alongside the smartphone demand increase that propagated stiff competition and manufacturers trying to outgun one another in the form of specs. The DRAM demand - and its ridiculous prices, at the time - propelled Samsung towards the top spot in terms of revenue, leaving Intel in the dust.

However, with the decrease in DRAM pricing following the reduce in smartphone demand and increased manufacturing capabilities of semiconductor manufacturers, which flooded the market with product that is being more slowly digested, has led to the drop of the previously-inflated Dram pricing, thus hitting Samsung's revenues enough for Intel to again become "top dog" in the silicon manufacturing world - even as the company struggles with its 10 nm rollout and faced supply issues of their own. As IC Insights puts it, "Intel replaced Samsung as the number one quarterly semiconductor supplier in 4Q18 after losing the lead spot to Samsung in 2Q17. (...) With the collapse of the DRAM and NAND flash markets over the past year, a complete switch has occurred, with Samsung having 23% more total semiconductor sales than Intel in 1Q18 but Intel having 23% more semiconductor sales than Samsung just one year later in 1Q19!".

Growing anger among PC manufacturers, retailers, and consumers in general, over supply issues with Intel processors, compounded with rising prices, and prompted Bob Swan, CFO and Interim-CEO of Intel, to write an open-letter, addressed to customers and partners, which counts you, since we received it in our main news channel from Intel. The language in the e-mail is straightforward and we wouldn't want to interpret it further than Intel grappling with a combination of massive demand from both its cloud-computing customers, and PC manufacturers hit by a surge of customers upgrading their machines (probably because it took Intel 10 years to increase CPU core counts, giving people a reason to upgrade).

To mitigate this, Intel is firing up all its manufacturing assets, across Oregon, Arizona, Ireland and Israel, in addition to its main foundries, by pumping in an additional $1 billion in capital expenditure (which is now at $15 billion). The letter doesn't miss out mentioning 10 nm, that the company is making progress with yields, and that volume production should roll out in 2019 (without offering guidance as to when). Intel also reassured PC OEMs that their supply teams will be in closer contact with them over the coming weeks. Without further ado, the open-letter follows verbatim.The letter follows.

DigiTimes, citing "sources from the upstream supply chain", is reporting an expected decrease in graphics card pricing for July. This move comes as a way for suppliers to reduce the inventory previously piled in expectation of continued demand from cryptocurrency miners and gamers in general. It's the economic system at work, with its strengths and weaknesses: now that demand has waned, somewhat speculative price increases of yore are being axed by suppliers to spur demand. This also acts as a countermeasure to an eventual flow of graphics cards from ceasing-to-be miners to the second-hand market, which would further place a negative stress on retailers' products.

Alongside this expected 20% retail price drop for graphics cards, revenue estimates for major semiconductor manufacturer TSMC and its partners is being revised towards lower than previously-projected values, as demand for graphics and ASIC chips is further reduced. DigiTimes' sources say that the worldwide graphics card market now has an inventory of several million units that is being found hard to move (perhaps because the products are already ancient in the usual hardware tech timeframes), and that Nvidia has around a million GPUs still pending logistical distribution. Almost as an afterthought, DigiTimes also adds that NVIDIA has decided to postpone launch of their next-gen products (both 12 nm and then, forcibly, 7 nm) until supply returns to safe levels.

We've previously touched upon whether or not NVIDIA should launch their 1100 or 2000 series of graphics cards ahead of any new product from AMD. At the time, I wrote that I only saw benefits to that approach: earlier time to market -> satisfaction of upgrade itches and entrenchment as the only latest-gen manufacturer -> raised costs over lack of competition -> ability to respond by lowering prices after achieving a war-chest of profits. However, reports of a costly NVIDIA mistake in overestimating demand for its Pascal GPUs does lend some other shades to the whole equation.

Write-offs in inventory are costly (just ask Microsoft), and apparently, NVIDIA has found itself in a miscalculating demeanor: overestimating gamers' and miners' demand for their graphics cards. When it comes to gamers, NVIDIA's Pascal graphics cards have been available in the market for two years now - it's relatively safe to say that the majority of gamers who needed higher-performance graphics cards have already taken the plunge. As to miners, the cryptocurrency market contraction (and other factors) has led to a taper-out of graphics card demand for this particular workload. The result? NVIDIA's demand overestimation has led, according to Seeking Alpha, to a "top three" Taiwan OEM returning 300,000 GPUs to NVIDIA, and "aggressively" increased GDDR5 buying orders from the company, suggesting an excess stock of GPUs that need to be made into boards.

According to DigiTimes, the entire AIB partner and graphics card supply channel is gearing up to an expected demand decrease for graphics cards in the second half of 2018. This marks an expectation on the continuation of the downward trend since December 2017, a time where Bitcoin (and as such, alternate cryptocurrencies) were at all-time highs. As profits decrease, difficulty increases, and mining players offload their graphics cards to still-interested buyers of their hardware, the market's ability to trade existing graphics cards and absorb new inventory is dwindling. Naturally, this reduced demand means that prices for new graphics cards have also been decreasing and somewhat stabilizing towards pre-mining boom prices.

However, producers of graphics cards obviously don't want to give away their record-high profits in their entirety; and they're showing some reluctance, some "pricing memory" on their graphics cards, maintaining gross margins in the 20% area, double that of pre-mining pricing. As such, graphics card makers are again abandoning the mining boom as a source of stable revenue, looking to other solutions (such as servers, datacenter acceleration and such, DigiTimes reports in the case of TUL). Another thing that would certainly help graphics card manufacturers in keeping up high demand and profits, of course, would be the impending release of a new NVIDIA architecture... At least for those that have AIB status with the company.

If there's one green, DIY upgrade path available for users far and wide right now is acquiring an SSD. With prices on RAM being crazy enough as they are (even if slightly better now compared to some months ago), and the finally cooling prices on graphics cards (due, in no small part, to this), the latest times have been hard for users looking for a straight upgrade. SSDs, however, provide one of the most impactful system upgrades for any kind of user's workload - and pricing on these has been as merry as merry can be, with a chance of improving even more in the future.

DigiTimes, quoting industry sources, reports that NAND flash supply should see improvements from its 4Q17 state in 2018. This likely doesn't come as much of a surprise - 2017 has been a sort of "squeeze" year for NAND and DDR memory manufacturing, with companies increasing production without committing to fully satisfy demand, which in turn translates to longer term higher pricing of memory. Still, those tentative increases to production capabilities should begin to release the memory pricing squeeze during 1Q18, with ASP (average selling price) coming down.

The increase in production and supply doesn't come solely from factory floor expansions, however; there's also been reports of increased yields of 3D NAND fabrication technologies, which should also increase availability in the best way possible for manufacturers.

There were some rumors regarding an expected low availability of Intel's latest, 8th Gen "Coffee Lake" CPUs. Then, in a new report, those rumors were sort of confirmed by Newegg. Now, we have it straight from the blue giant themselves, as Intel has announced that they're adding another facility to their 8th Gen Coffee Lake production and certification facilities. Stock of Intel 8th Gen CPUs has been spotty, to say the least, and pricing of the lineup's unlocked CPUs (8600K and 8700K, which are the most interesting for enthusiasts) have been particularly affected. If current output isn't enough to satisfy demand, the oldest trick in the book is to simply improve output. And Intel is doing it.

While Intel has been mainly using its assembly and test facilities based in Malaysia, the company is adding a new, certified assembly to the list: one in Chengdu, China. That shouldn't send alarms ringing, however; Intel's assembly and test facilities are a part of Intel's Copy Exactly! (CE!) program. This means that in order to be certified, all facilities must have identical methodologies and process technologies across different production sites throughout the world - there should be no quantifiable difference in quality. Intel's customers will begin to receive the aforementioned processors assembled in China starting from December 15. There is no real way to know exactly how much difference the new assembly facility will make on the worldwide supply of Intel 8h Gen CPUs - but it should only improve.

DRAMeXchange, a division of TrendForce, has come forward with the expected announcement that DRAM output in 2018 likely won't be enough to fully satisfy supply. This has been the case for some time now. However, what started with simple insufficient output that could contain the explosion of DRAM capacity in smartphones seems to now be turning into a conscious decision by the three top memory manufacturers. Samsung, Micron, and SK Hynix are seemingly setting output at a lower than required level so as to artificially inflate pricing due to low supply. TrendForce themselves say so, in that these suppliers "(...) have opted to slow down their capacity expansions and technology migrations so that they can keep next year's prices at the same high level as during this year's second half. Doing so will also help them to sustain a strong profit margin."

DRAM production is expected to increase by 19,6% in 2018; however, this ratio is lower than the expected growth in demand, which is being pegged at 20,6%. This means 2018 is likely to see increased constraint in the supply channels (whereas 2018 was actually expected to see a slight relief in supply issues). This means that pricing will either stabilize or tend to increase from current levels. To be fair, semiconductor production isn't as simple as hitting a "increase production by 10x" button; reports say that all three players are contending with insufficient room to expand output on their production lines, and getting a new production facility online isn't a trivial effort - neither in funds, nor on time. However... All involved companies would much rather keep prices as they are than see them being brought down by oversupply.