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[Pemalite]

Bofferbrauer2 said:

Pemalite said:

Part of the issue is AMD has a wafer contract with TSMC... Which gives them a fixed supply of 300mm 7nm wafers... And because of the consoles from Microsoft and Sony, AMD has to honor the contract with the consoles, so they get priority on those limited 300mm 7nm wafers.

I feel like nVidia dodged a bullet there... But then again, Samsungs 8nm process has been dogs balls with it's own issues... I.E. It's actually based on 10nm which is actually feature-size, closer to Intels 14nm process than 10nm in terms of geometries... And the yields on that have been terrible for monolithic chips, Samsung just isn't as proficient as TSMC.

Either way, poor supply is likely to stick around for 2021.

As far as I remember, there was a news a couple weeks ago (think in October) that AMD would get a higher amount of Wafers (due to mobile clients moving to 5nm processes, leaving more room for the 7nm of AMD) for 2021. If that holds true, then the supply situation could improve starting March

Might improve... But low-end SoC's might start gobbling up some of that capacity... Most budget SoC's are still using 14nm or a derivative of such like 11nm or 12nm and will likely shift to 7nm as capacity becomes free.

I.E the MediaTek G Series is all stuck at 12nm right now and MediaTek will likely start shifting those SoC's to 7nm at TSMC very soon.
And lower-end SoC's is where the volume is.

Qualcomm and nVidia are also rumored to be jumping some products back over to TSMC as well... And Intel is looking towards TSMC at the moment while it pivots around it's 10nm disaster.

The consoles are also selling better than expected with Microsoft and Sony amending and raising forecasts, so there could be extra chips for those markets as well.

It will be an interesting year at any rate.