Discussion Worst-case - chip shortage to last till 2023

[alceryes]

https://hardware.slashdot.org/story...xecs-agree-chip-shortage-could-last-into-2023

Might as well hunker down with your four-generation-old gaming GPU. Treat it well - you may be using it for a while.

 

[renz496]

Not really. By most estimates, demand is only about 30% ahead of current supply, so the world only needs maybe one TSMC worth of extra capacity and it will get a good chunk of it in 2023 from the three usual suspects' new fabs and upgrades at 50-150k WSPM a pop.

China also has a bunch of 'planned' fabs with an aggregate capacity around 1M WSPM which would take a pretty good bite out of outside suppliers' load if successful.

And then you also have the fact that a 12-16nm chips shrunk to 6-8nm will produce 2-4X as many usable chips per wafer depending on how well the circuitry scales with process and the bits that don't scale well at all or need to be extra-rugged can be spun off on a separate die if necessary.

Hard to say. Those mining has encourage bottomless greed. For them "the more you buy the more your hash rates". And i have seen some people commenting about being "addicted" to keep adding gpu to their small mining rig.

 

[InvalidError]

Hard to say. Those mining has encourage bottomless greed. For them "the more you buy the more your hash rates". And i have seen some people commenting about being "addicted" to keep adding gpu to their small mining rig.

While mining may be a seemingly bottomless GPU sinkhole, I doubt it would be able to absorb the ~500k 5-7nm WSPM that are going to get added by the end of 2023 - that's going to be 50+ million new chips per month if they were all 300-400sqmm.

 

[Griffyn]

/dances with 4 year old 1080Ti
Well, it seems to be aging better than the GTX 680 I previously ran 5 years on...

Pascal. LIVES. ON!

Same, I'm still rocking my 1070

 

[alceryes]

I need to check that game out - I like me some RPGs - but I've already got like 4-5 games in my library I've yet to start on... UGH.

It's a great game. The PC port does suffer from some minor issues but the eye-candy is gorgeous with all settings maxxed out.

 

[coolraveen]

Newegg India has listed an GTX 1650 super for 45000inr, that is 600usd, and verge says nvidia has warned that the GPU shortage will be through 2021 and early 2022. That means maybe mid 2022 to normalise, I would happy to even grab an 2nd hand 1080ti.

 

[alceryes]

It definitely was.

The 12GBs of VRAM should ensure that it will just slowly fade in performance instead of dropping off a cliff. MSI afterburner can display actual 'used' VRAM (not allocated) once you enable the GPU.dll monitoring. Horizon Zero Dawn (my new obsession) gets to 9.6GBs used with all settings maxxed at 1440p.

Hey all. Looks like I was incorrect regarding VRAM usage. 😉
See here for more info - https://forums.tomshardware.com/thr...tion-is-not-vram-usage.3664582/#post-22296355

 

[zodz77]

An endless spiral. Just shows how much everything relies on complex technology. Best get to preparing my bunker.

something big is going to happen this year

 

[dan1991Ro]

To my knowledge,the large increase in prices has happened only with gpus.Not with cpus,motherboards.It happened with DRAM a bit,but i dont think its because shortage of semiconductors in large part.Where i live Intel and AMD cpus are basically at their normal price,same for motherboards.GPUs increasing so drastically i think its atributable to cryptomining.Maybe a 10 percent increase is because of semiconductor shortage,the rest is straight up crypto boom,in my opinion.

 

[coolraveen]

To my knowledge,the large increase in prices has happened only with gpus.Not with cpus,motherboards.It happened with DRAM a bit,but i dont think its because shortage of semiconductors in large part.Where i live Intel and AMD cpus are basically at their normal price,same for motherboards.GPUs increasing so drastically i think its atributable to cryptomining.Maybe a 10 percent increase is because of semiconductor shortage,the rest is straight up crypto boom,in my opinion.

Yes only the GPU prices are high now, in my country 5600x is back to its normal price of 28000inr or 373 usd, which is our pre corona price.

 

[Exploding PSU]

I already have at least 4 people asking me to sell my Vega 56 for twice the price I bought it, or trade it with something like 1080 or 2070.
Sounds like a spanking deal, but no. I'm holding on to my hardware for the foreseeable future.

 

[David0ne86]

Welcome to an almost 9 billion population planet with a single semiconductor production factory. This is what eventually had to happen. Everything now has a chip in it. Silicon isn't infinite. As classic human being behavior, it only starts to worry when the problem present itself rather than try to have a look at the future and working toward preventing a problem rather than just trying to patch it up as long as possible. Just look at people only just now waking up realizing this planet is slowly going towards it's death (ofc that is still matter of centuries if not millenia, but you get what im trying to say).

We are a selfish specie for the most part, and we eventually reap what we sow. The old fable of the cicada and the ant wasn't create just to teach kids a lesson.

 

[Eximo]

More of an economic problem at the moment. We aren't running out of silicon anytime soon, easily accessible silicon, maybe (Might have a word with the concrete industry about that one). Just need to step up our recycling game at that point. Some of the "rare earths" that are used in doping are more of a concern (only rare due to environmental concerns with extracting them). But there are alternatives to silicon that are even more common, so that wouldn't be a big deal if things came down to that. Carbon nanotubes, graphene (And other 2d materials) show great promise for replacing silicon chips.

Really comes down to fabs running with reduced workforces for several weeks/months due to covid, an environmental disaster, poor decision making by some customers (in canceling their orders and losing their allotment), and unexpectedly high demand. Huge risk in building a fab and then finding there isn't as much demand as you thought. We are also constantly seeking more power efficient devices, which is driving constant re-tooling, so even the fab space that exists undergoes constant upgrades which increases downtime. And thanks to poor decisions, the companies that builds the equipment for the fabs is also facing a chip shortage.