AMD CEO Lisa Su Thinks Chip Shortage Will End in the Second Half of 2022

[Tsing]

Image: AMD



The global chip shortage should finally become less severe in the second half of 2022. This is according to AMD President and CEO Dr. Lisa Su, who spoke at the ongoing Code Conference in Beverly Hills and suggested that availability will improve during that time. While chip supply will likely remain “tight” over the first half of the year, Su is optimistic thanks to the arrival of new manufacturing plants, many of which are expected to go operational and start producing chips in the coming months.



“We’ve always gone through cycles of ups and downs, where demand has exceeded supply, or vice versa,” Su said in regard to supply chain issues. “This time, it’s different.”



“It might take, you know, 18 to 24 months to put on a new plant, and in some cases even longer than that. These investments were started perhaps a year ago.”



Su also...

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[Burticus]

Sounds about right, I read somewhere else predicting end of 2022/early 2023 but that article was about chips for new cars/trucks.

 

[MadMummy76]

Somehow this reminded me of Oddball.

 

[Zarathustra]

I don't know.

This sounds a little optimistic to me.

From what I can tell, none of the fundamental structural issues that have resulted in the shortage will have ended by 2022.

Sure, certain pandemic supply chain issues will likely be recovered by then, but they are only a small portion of the problem.

On the flipside, Crypto is still going strong despite China's best efforts (we will see what happens after the conclusion of SEC v. Ripple) IoT is growing more explosively than ever, and vehicles and all sorts of other devices are becoming ever more connected and dependent on chips. PC Gaming appears to be going through a surge in popularity (if not a renaissance) consoles have had a huge demand as well, and mobile hasn't exactly gone anywhere. All the demand stressors are there and don't appear to be going anywhere any time soon.

On the supply side, Intel is starting to recover from their 10nm fail, but despite an effort to start doing so a few years back, they weren't really 3rd party manufacturing chips anyway, so that doesn't really change the global supply.

GlobalFoundries is still out having called it quits on anything smaller than 12nm, Samsung is still just barely holding on by their fingernails, which leaves TSMC as the only reliable source.

And sure, TSMC is expanding, but their new plants aren't supposed to come online until 2024, and even then it remains to be seen if the added supply is sufficient to help, or if the demand between Crypto, IoT, Mobile and other connected devices is so insatiable that it will just instantly gobble up whatever new supply comes online.

It just isn't clear to me what she thinks might change between now and second half of 2022.

I mean, she clearly has more insight into the semiconductor manufacturing world than I do, I'm not questioning her expertise, but I can't for the life of me figure out what her reasoning is. You also have to take what comes out of a CEO's mouth with a grain of salt as they always have their stock performance in mind, and will try to spin things to optimize it.

 

[Brian_B]

It just isn't clear to me what she thinks might change between now and second half of 2022.

My guess is that AMD will start moving some of their newer stuff off 7nm and onto 5nm, which will ease up some capacity. Maybe not enough to completely fix the issue, but should see some relief.

 

[Grimlakin]

I suspect that we are only reflecting on announcements made this year on fab capacity.

Looking back there were several announcements in 2020 that would fit with Lisa's time line. Global Foundries and TSMC alone each announced one in 2020.

There are others I am sure.

 

[Zarathustra]

I suspect that we are only reflecting on announcements made this year on fab capacity.

Looking back there were several announcements in 2020 that would fit with Lisa's time line. Global Foundries and TSMC alone each announced one in 2020.

There are others I am sure.

Isn't GloFo still stuck at 12nm though? That won't do much for the parts we are interested in...

 

[Brian_B]

Isn't GloFo still stuck at 12nm though? That won't do much for the parts we are interested in...

This may be just a bit of word play, but yeah, they did stop research on 7nm and better nodes back in 2018, so they could focus on production of existing capacities.

That said, I don't expect that to be a permanent situation. Eventually they will move beyond 12nm. I don't know that they will ever being cutting edge in the arena of parts we are interested in though.

 

[Denpepe]

My guess is that AMD will start moving some of their newer stuff off 7nm and onto 5nm, which will ease up some capacity. Maybe not enough to completely fix the issue, but should see some relief.

Well one could also assume that yields should go up the more mature a process get's and due to TSMC having more nodes avaliable to make.chips on should also increase supply.

Also intel beeing somewhat competitive again will make their chips more desirable and will lessen demand overall this goes for both CPU's and GPU's if their mid tier offerings are good enough.

And consoles have a longer lifecycle then for example GPU's so demand should eventually slow down a bit.