[Updated] Ryzen 4800H Supply Constraints at XMG Schenker, possibly extending industry wide

[soldier_ph]

Summary

XMG Schenker, the German Custom Notebook and PC Brand known for Notebooks such as the Apex 15 which Linus reviewed recently, today announced over a Reddit post serious supply constraints with the AMD Ryzen 4800H Mobile CPU. The Shortage in available 4800H CPUs results in orders that were meant to be fulfilled in August to get delayed to end of September. The recent uptick in the popularity of the Zen 2 Mobile CPUs which resulted in this Shortage now could extend Industry wide. 

 

Quote

Quote

-Quote from the Reddit Post-

 

on July 31 we received an announcement from our ODM that we are facing a serious CPU shortage from AMD in Q3 2020. Large orders that have recently been confirmed to be shipped from our ODM in the middle and end of August are now supposed to be delayed until the end of September.

This is explained by a serious uptick in demand from larger brands and by what we assume bottlenecks in AMD's production capacities.

Upon receiving this news on Friday (July 31), we reached out to our corporate contacts in AMD who confirmed that this is an industry-wide shortage and there is no way around it. We currently have an order backlog with our ODM on Ryzen 7 4800H of over 1600 units. Both AMD and our ODM have confirmed that our demand has been allocated (meaning: we will get those CPUs), but the goods won't reach our ODM before End of September.

 

Industry Background:

 

It's very disappointing for us that our ODM was not able to inform us about these bottlenecks in advance. On the other hand, it's not entirely surprising that AMD is going to struggle in meeting demand, considering that are financially a much smaller company compared to Intel and they don't have their own factories. AMD's chipmaker TSMC is pretty popular with NVIDIA and other big tech companies and they are usually fully booked months in advance, so AMD cannot quickly ramp up production and align with current demand.

This coincides with global brands who finally got the memo that AMD's tech is pretty good. It looks like the usual suspects (insert brand names here) have placed pretty huge orders with AMD and we have already heard pretty wild stories about AMD's laptop sales records in China among others.

 

Why so complicated ?

 

We still have a good amount of stock on certain configurations, but a few more popular ones are almost sold out by now. We cannot give a generic info like "Order date after xy is delayed", because there are so many different variables:

• Base model (CORE 15 vs. CORE 17)

• LCD selection (60Hz vs 144Hz)

• GPU selection (GTX 1650 Ti vs RTX 2060)

• Keyboard Layout (German keyboard vs. All other keyboards)

The keyboard layout is especially tricky. When producing barebone laptops at our ODM's factory, the SKUs are pretty much split into two variationes each:

• German Keyboard with XMG branding

• Blank Keyboard without branding

The latter ones are used for SCHENKER and TUXEDO customers, and for everyone who orders XMG CORE with a non-German keyboard layout. The keyboard language printing and the branding on the LCD lid (XMG, SCHENKER, TUXEDO) is added by us in Germany for each order individually.

With those variations, certain configs might also sold-out in the "Blank" SKU and only left available in German - or vice-versa. (Although Blank barebones can be printed with German keyboard as well. But not the other way around.)

 

How are we going to handle your Order ?

 

We will communicate with you from our side by e-mail. There are multiple levels, sorted by order date and defined by configuration availability.

Level 1: Goods in stock, order will be shipped in next 1~2 weeks

For those lucky enough (depending on configuration and order date), there won't be any futher e-mail information. Your next e-mail will be the shipping confirmation.

 

Level 2: Your config is out of stock, but we have alternatives

If you are in this segmet, you will get an e-mail from us this week. You will be given a number of choices:

• Option A: Downgrade from Ryzen 7 4800 to Ryzen 5 4600H and receive a 100€ partial refund (incl. VAT)

• Option B: Downgrade from 62Wh to 46Wh battery and receive a 50€ partial refund (incl. VAT)

• Option  Switch from AMD Ryzen 7 4800H to Intel Core i7-10750H without paying extra

  • The Intel model of XMG CORE is currently ~100€ more expensive than the AMD model. If you have pre-ordered AMD and you fall within this bottleneck delay, we'll not charge you extra for switching to Intel

• Option  Cancel your order, full refund, no hard feelings

Options A and B will most likely have to be combined in most configurations. This results in a 150€ refund including VAT. Even though different countries have different VATs, we're going to make this a flat rate for everyone. Please don't do the math. 

For 'Option C' please keep in mind that the Intel model of XMG CORE is currently ~100€ more expensive than the AMD model. If you have pre-ordered AMD and you fall within this bottleneck delay, we'll not charge you extra for switching to Intel. For this option, we won't need to 'cancel and re-order' - we can make the configuration change directly in our ERP system.

For 'Option D', please let us know your preferred method of refund. If you would like to receive your refund via IBAN/BIC bank transfer, please include the account details in your e-mail.

 

Level 3: Your config is out of stock and we don't have a direct alternative

In this segment you will also get an e-mail this week, but only Options C and D would be available for you.

 

Level 4: You haven't even ordered yet

If you're going to order XMG CORE with AMD right now, you will see a new ETA of "Beginning of October" on our configuration page.

 

 

My thoughts

This actually affects me personally. I have ordered the XMG Schenker Core 15 AMD (with 4800H/RTX 2060), the exact Model which has Supply Constraints now, on July 14th. And so far I haven't heard from them, on the Bestware Website it just says under my order that it's being fulfilled. Now I do expect an E-Mail from them if my order is affected by the Supply Constraint which I really hope it isn't. Luckily I won't be going back to school anyways so I wouldn't necessarily need a Notebook but still I waited more than half a year now for the good Gaming Renoir Notebooks to become available and it looks like I'm not the only one who is hyped for these. This is both good and bad News for AMD, the good being that Zen 2 and especially now the Renoir chips really popular and the bad of course that TSMC can't keep up with the demand. TSMC always gets completely booked out Months in advance so they can't really ramp up the Production of chips form one Customer. And keep in mind that TSMC is now the worlds biggest and arguably most liked Chipmaker so everyone wants a slice of the delicious Chip Cake with the most advanced Process Nodes available.

 

Update:

 

The XMG Schenker Core 15 AMD which I have ordered on 14th of July is finally shipping: https://linustechtips.com/main/profile/367767-pascal/?status=273307&type=status

 

Sources

https://www.reddit.com/r/XMG_gg/comments/i2vsu9/supply_bottleneck_on_amd_ryzen_in_xmg_core/

 

https://www.techpowerup.com/270611/xmg-announces-serious-constraints-on-amd-ryzen-7-4800h-supply-could-extend-to-industry

[Korben]

Well, I guess AMD was a bit too pessimistic when they ordered at TSMC... Beaten by their own success.

[Red :)]

[zeusthemoose]

Very disappointing (but not surprising) that AMD cant keep up with stock. I hope this doesn't happen to their desktop models as well.

Nevertheless, very interesting and great write up!

[Korben]

1 minute ago, zeusthemoose said:

Very disappointing (but not surprising) that AMD cant keep up with stock. I hope this doesn't happen to their desktop models as well.

Nevertheless, very interesting and great write up!

It depends.. I am pretty sure they are aware that demand is very high, but I don't know how far in advance they had to order... but I guess at least 6 month. A lot can happen during this time and if you calculate wrong, you either sit on a pile of silicon or have to deal with angry customers.

The other factor is that TSMC is quiet busy and the capacities are limited, I guess. And the human malware thing plays a role in this too.

[Tristerin]

Makes sense, Laptop and AMD CPU are not synonymous so putting a large chunk of capital towards laptop CPU production doesn't make sense - but the world wanting moar AMD finally, does.  Hell I have a AMD CPU laptop, which kind of surprises me, but other than that I personally don't know anyone with one (Its an old school APU) in the real world.

[soldier_ph]

2 minutes ago, BlueScope819 said:

This is quite interesting, as LTT discussed last WAN show it takes a while for TSMC and other fabs to make capacity (like 5 years) so I'm positive they did not expect this to happen. It must be quite the all hands on deck operation. It would be really interesting for Linus to tour a TSMC or Global Foundries fab.

Yeah I too would really like to see them Tour a fab like TSMC or Globalfoundries. They would just have to make sure that he can't Drop any expensive equipment or products lol.

[Grabhanem]

I'm really not too surprised. Given that AMD was still in a roughly even position during Coffee Lake R desktop (let's be real here, I'm a huge fan of Matisse but it never really beat Intel in gaming) I don't think anybody expected Renoir to roll Intel as hard as it did.

 

Personally I'm waiting for 4800U laptops to show up more-- 8C/16T in a thin and light is quite something.

[Red :)]

4 minutes ago, Pascal... said:

Yeah I too would really like to see them Tour a fab like TSMC or Globalfoundries. They would just have to make sure that he can't Drop any expensive equipment or products lol.

I'm kinda sad that there's only two fabs of that kind because if it were four fabs, we could call them The Fab Four.

[KaitouX]

Quote

-From Reddit post-

Because this situation has been brought upon us by AMD's relatively unstable supply situation, I would like to add a few more words about AMD vs. Intel in general.

While AMD has all the momentum right now, let us also not forget the advantages of the Intel platform.

• Better Gaming performance on average

• More PCIe lanes for the GPU

• Slightly better iGPU driver support, because AMD does not include model-specific hotfixes and customizations into the mainline driver. Instead, they "vouch" to release OEM drivers to their partners only every 6 month until... well, until the product is EOL

....

It's kinda weird that they would add this in the post considering it is unrelated to the topic and it's mostly things that have no proof of being true/important, it looks extremely unprofessional to have a rant in a notice about supply issues in my opinion. The first point while true at the high-end on Desktop, there seems to be no difference when it comes to notebooks, the lower performance of the GPUs compared to desktop and the lower performance of Intel CPUs seems to remove any visible difference in performance. The second point while it's a fact, there's no proof that it would have any significant impact in most cases, at least in desktops only some extreme cases can cause visible impact in performance. The third I'm not sure about it so no comments there.

The things after that(left out of the quote) are even more unrelated, being about some issues in Death Stranding when using the Ryzen 3900X which in the linked video is said to be likely something related to the latency or a bug, which likely wouldn't affect Renoir or even some Desktop CPUs. Even if the point is about possible issues with Ryzen CPUs, there's no guarantee that Intel wouldn't have issues in some games because of some random reason and the point about "platform stability" seems to have zero reflection in reality, as there seems to be no issues that are particular to Renoir CPUs in notebooks.

 

On-topic: I wouldn't be surprised if the ODM underestimated the demand which could have caused the issue to become bigger, but AMD having supply issues is something that will probably be a thing for quite some time.

[Loote]

I believe AMD has to pay TSMC in advance to produce those chips, I wouldn't be surprised if they couldn't afford ordering much more than they did even if they expected such interest. I'd love to read a verification of that idea by someone who actually knows something about it though.

[Jotoco]

Not a single Ryzen 4000 model has launched in Brazil yet. Not any of the CPU models. 

 

AMD is very, very short in supply for these cpus. 

 

They will probably be back ordered through Christmas and possibly into Ryzen 5000 launch. 

[Curufinwe_wins]

If Intel is running beyond capacity with their outclassed parts on 5 year old nodes, you can be darn sure that TSMC doesn't have spare leading node capacity either. Not surprising one bit.

[5x5]

16 hours ago, Jotoco said:

Not a single Ryzen 4000 model has launched in Brazil yet. Not any of the CPU models. 

 

AMD is very, very short in supply for these cpus. 

 

They will probably be back ordered through Christmas and possibly into Ryzen 5000 launch. 

Not necessarily. I expect supply will be reshuffled from other markets and internal allocation will change (keep in mind Zen 3 is in production alongside Zen 2 ATM). I expect this to be resolved as soon as Zen 3 launches and Zen 2 production halts. That would allow the fab space to be shifted over to Renoir and Zen 3 entirely.

[Doobeedoo]

Selling like cakes eh. 

[GOTSpectrum]

18 hours ago, Korben said:

It depends.. I am pretty sure they are aware that demand is very high, but I don't know how far in advance they had to order... but I guess at least 6 month. A lot can happen during this time and if you calculate wrong, you either sit on a pile of silicon or have to deal with angry customers.

The other factor is that TSMC is quiet busy and the capacities are limited, I guess. And the human malware thing plays a role in this too.

The one advantage to the US None violent war on china is at least TSMC will be freeing up a good bunch of capacity from Huawei in the coming weeks. Depending on if they have customers lined up could be a small price drop in order to get the fabs back to full cap production. (the price drop would 100% depend on if apple, AMD and the like need to throw a massive chunk of orders at them or not) Good ol' supply and demand! 

[Jotoco]

7 hours ago, Doobeedoo said:

Selling like cakes eh. 

Selling like face masks

[Drama Lama]

On 8/3/2020 at 10:17 PM, BlueScope819 said:

This is quite interesting, as LTT discussed last WAN show it takes a while for TSMC and other fabs to make capacity (like 5 years) so I'm positive they did not expect this to happen. It must be quite the all hands on deck operation. It would be really interesting for Linus to tour a TSMC or Global Foundries fab.

In a Video ( i think it was ars technica  but could be wrong (  at least some video about Linus reading his top 1000 comments or something   ) )  

Linus said that that is something he really wants to do but is very difficult 

[Drama Lama]

15 hours ago, Doobeedoo said:

Selling like cakes eh. 

or sliced bread 

[zeusthemoose]

3 minutes ago, Drama Lama said:

In a Video ( i think it was ars technica  but could be wrong (  at least some video about Linus reading his top 1000 comments or something   ) )  

Linus said that that is something he really wants to do but is very difficult 

I think it is this video you are talking about. I believe he says it is all really confidential so he’s not allowed in much less allowed to film.

 

[williamcll]

What about the Desktop CPU models? They don't seem to be as constrained.

[Kisai]

On 8/3/2020 at 1:01 PM, Pascal... said:

 

My thoughts

This actually affects me personally. I have ordered the XMG Schenker Core 15 AMD (with 4800H/RTX 2060), the exact Model which has Supply Constraints now, on July 14th.

 

Well, if there's a problem with supply, and you've already ordered it at X price, then I'd probably just insist on having the original order fullfilled.

 

With that said, Why is an OEM producing so many different lines of laptop without having the necessary parts? That seems like a failure on their part, and based on their downgrade options, suggests they didn't plan for a contingency, only that they would get the parts. A delayed manufacturing means the laptop has less shelf life.

 

IMO, it's good that AMD has these orders, but I think they're going to have to start resorting to pre-order type nonsense just to ensure that delays don't screw their OEM's and prosumer customers. Why would you buy from AMD again if the last time you ordered, you didn't get your computer for three months? You can't delay work on a project for three months without a computer, and I assume that anyone actually ordering the laptops still has a computer they can use in the mean time, even if it's only 1/4th as good as a new one.

[mr moose]

This was actually partially predicted at the end of last year:

 

https://www.thestreet.com/investing/stocks/cpu-shortages-impact-pc-industry-15104180

 

Between Intel not being able to meet demand and AMD being a genuine first choice and coinciding with an uptick in PC sales and on the back of mass corporate upgrades due to the end of windows 7 it was a perfect storm.  I just hope AMD can source more production and capitalize on the increased demand.

 

 

 

[GDRRiley]

19 hours ago, Curufinwe_wins said:

If Intel is running beyond capacity with their outclassed parts on 5 year old nodes, you can be darn sure that TSMC doesn't have spare leading node capacity either. Not surprising one bit.

they do as apple moves onto 5nm and some other customers don't get any cus they couldn't buy as much as they wanted like Nvida.

 

AMD just needs to buy more wafers and get more zen APUs going, not a big surprise they didn't get enough made, they really didn't know demand.

i'd bet by holiday they'll have enough being made to keep up but by then new APUs maybe out

Edited August 5, 2020 by GDRRiley

[Arika]

TSMC was bound to run into capacity issues. of COURSE this was going to happen, just look at their biggest customers

 

• Apple
• AMD
• Broadcom
• Marvell
• MediaTek
• Qualcom
• HiSilicon/Huawei
• Intel (already outsource some things to them)
• Texas Instruments.