Why have only GPU's taken a hit?

[Rocketdog2112]

Is it my imagination with the current chip shortage, that only GPU's (new or used) have skyrocketed in price while other items like new or used CPU's, ram and motherboards have remained at normal levels? Most even dirt cheap.

[dizmo]

There are many, many components in a GPU, not just the core. That's one of the issues. You also don't make money with any of the other components like you can with a GPU.

[emosun]

 

[RONOTHAN##]

3 minutes ago, Rocketdog2112 said:

Is it my imagination with the current chip shortage, that only GPU's have skyrocketed in price while other items like ram and motherboards have remained at normal levels?

Motherboards, for the little silicon they do have on them, use much older process nodes that aren't really backed up. RAM is a completely different process, and it actually has gotten more expensive, just not by the same degree. Back before the shortage (Summer 2020) you could get a kit of 3600MHz CL16 for ~$60. That same kit today will be closer to ~$70-80. There's also the DDR5 shortages going on. 

 

CPUs were in short supply for like 3-6 months, it's just that they came back into stock since Intel has its own fab capacity so demand could be met. GPUs just haven't since both Samsung and TSMC are at capacity with on their GPU nodes. Also GPUs are being used for Crypto mining which is a big part for why there's so little available, because if you look at the numbers more GPUs are actually being produced than ever before, it's just that they aren't making it to consumers. Plus, other components like capacitors and GDDR6(x) have gotten more expensive because of the material shortages, so prices have gone up.

[Chris Pratt]

The main cause of the GPU shortage has been wafer availability. AMD uses TSMC 7nm, which is also used for Zen 2 and 3, as well as every PS5 and Xbox Series X|S that rolls off the line. There's not enough to go around. Nvidia is using Samsung 8nm, but Samsung has nowhere near the fab capacity that TSMC does, so supply is still constrained.

 

That alone doesn't answer why GPUs in particular have been hard hit. After all, you can still get Zen 2 and 3 CPUs, which are using the same node. That comes down to the die sizes. GPU dies can be 500mm² or larger, whereas AMD's CPU dies, for exampls, are around 100mm². The larger the die size, the less dies you can get out of a single wafer, and the more defects you end up with on the die, in general. You can sometimes work around those defects by disabling cores or such and selling a lower tiered product. Sometimes, the die ends up entirely rejected. In short, there's far more waste the larger you make the die.

 

Both Nvidia and AMD could sidestep these issues by making lower end cards that have smaller dies, resulting in both more available wafer and less waste, but they simply have refused to do so. The reason is fairly obvious: every 3080, 3090, etc. they mint, they sell. There's simply no value proposition in making cheaper cards right now. Therefore, supply remains constrained.

[LAwLz]

It isn't only GPUs that have gotten more expensive... Pretty much everything has, from tapioka to wood. 

[8tg]

It’s affected a lot more than consumer video cards. Beyond that it’s because of how these lithography fabrication plants production contracts work. There’s limited capacity and volume the facility can handle, everyone contractually has a certain amount they bid on to get the product manufactured. While intel has a lot of its own fabs, companies like nvidia, amd, apple, etc don’t, and go through others like the now very well known TSMC.

 

Further up that supply chain, when Covid hit, silicon source material mining, silicon refineries and first stage silicon foundries and processing plants all suffered massive worker shortages, government forced shutdowns, and to compound that even further the actual supply networks were hit with trade restrictions, commerce quarantines and depending on where these materials were coming from, usually border closures. 
Suddenly places like TSMC have a dwindling workforce, no supplies, and no way to get more supplies, no way to get their products out the door, and their contract partners all know this. 
Immediately there are bidding wars from every company involved trying to buy eachother out of limited capacity at the lithography plants, supply chains are barely holding together, the customer companies are throwing more and more money at the whole system to get their products out because the end consumers in the first world are still buying the same, If not more of their products, the plants can’t keep up, they’re swimming in money but it means nothing because they still can’t increase capacity with two decades of supply chain relations that just died on them, both metaphorically and literally.

 

Heres why certain stuff isn’t affected though, ram in particular or flash memory in general is a very different process that is spread out across way more companies all over the world. SK Hynix, Micron, Samsung, whatever, they’ve got contacts and contracts with everyone and anyone. As well the process for making something such as a DDR4 module is much less complex than current extremely dense lithography chip making.

Motherboards can be made in your own home if you had the right tools, the hard part about making motherboards is actually designing one, and that’s work that doesn’t require an office technically.  The on board components are fairly non complex and be sourced from tons of companies, if you really need to you can just recycle old boards and make new ones with them (see any aliexpress x58/79/99 motherboard).

 

 

We just watched the “putting all your eggs in one basket” idiom happen on a massive global technological scale. Over the past 20-25 years more and more companies have been trying to just outsource the production side of things to someone else, and the few Taiwanese fabs just kept taking everyone’s work and kept growing and then suddenly when something disrupts that, there is no backup.

Intel was mostly spared, they were just dipping their toes into the overseas fabrication market in companies to say, AMD and Nvidia which are 100% outsourced.

 

 

[Amias]

Miners have accelerated the GPU shortage by buying up most available stock right when great new cards were released after a generation of meh cards (2000 series). However those supply chain shortages are still prevalent across the world.

 

Mark my words, things are not getting better for a while.

 

My company (advanced lab equipment) is doing record breaking sales, yet starting to brick itself over actually manufacturing and supplying them. Across the patch supply constraints are hitting us across the patch. 

 

 

 

 

[Moonzy]

Quote

Why have only GPU's taken a hit?

because i keep buying them all