The Great GPU shortage isn't ending anytime soon

[philo-sofa]

GPUs seem to be going out of stock again.
Maybe it’s just waxing and waning as deliveries land, but it’s a lot harder to buy a GPU this month than last.

 

[CashmereThoughts]

When 3080ti FE’s drop at certain competitor sites, they’re in stock for good 20 minutes.

 

[CashmereThoughts]

Bit late for a mining card hahahaha. What is it going to mine? DOGE?

Either way, isn’t it good for GPU shortages?

 

[KompuKare]

I blame Brexit.

Just for once, that is not the cause.
But the car manufacturers have largely only themselves to blame: they are so obsessed with just-in-time that keeping stock is alien to them. Then when Coronavirus hit and consumer spending initially nose-dived, they all miscalculated and cut back chip orders. Once they realised that their demand actually continues to be high (more people don't want to use public transport - pollution, congestion, and cities even more overrun by cards be dammed), they eventually ordered more chips but found themselves at the very back of the queue.
About the only parallels with Brexit is that nobody keeps any inventory so disrupting supply chains is very risky as UK2021+ is finding.

 

[KompuKare]

Either way, isn’t it good for GPU shortages?

Maybe.
While GA100 is made on TSMC's 7nm process (however much Nvidia like to moan about wafer prices, for their most important and very expensive data centre and AI chip they had the sense to go for the best process), from the specs I quoted from TPU earlier this card looks to be so cut down that it should just be able to use parts not suitable for any other products based on GA100.

There is no gaming card based on GA100 anyhow.

 

[Cooper]

Just for once, that is not the cause.

Sigh...you thought I was being serious?

Just to be clear, it was a **** take on all the idiots who blame Brexit...for like, Everything.

 

[KNiVES]

The chip shortage is getting worse apparently. So there is less going towards making GPU's.

Apparently the car industry doubled it's original sales losses prediction from £40 billion to £80 billion in lost sales due to the chip shortage. So if you take that into context. Prices won't be coming down but going up like gibbo predicted. The only thing that will make them come down is either a crypto crash (where cryptos lose a lot of their current value) or mining becomes unprofitable (ethereum going POS). We know Ethereum is going POS next year but no idea when but we do know about the difficulty time bomb.

Unfortunately we don't know how bad this supply shortage is truly to GPU manufacturers. As in lets say mining demand goes down 40% but if they only get supplied with 50% of chips they had anticipated then prices will still go up. There is a lot of variables at play and we had predicted this "shortage" would stay the same or get better but it's gotten worse. This has then had a knock on effect.

I work in a car parts extrusion plant in the midlands, management is in discussion about layoffs and four-day working weeks (fifth day not paid) after furlough scheme ends in September. There are signs things are getting worse. In our weekly memo the operations director said orders are dropping and are even lower than this time last year. They've stopped all capital investment in the plant and gone into survival mode. The situation is horrendous.

The logistics people who collectively decided to stop ordering chips for cars just because we had a lockdown for a couple of months early 2020 have been variously described as naive, incompetent and much, much worse depending on who you talk to.

 

[CashmereThoughts]

Maybe.
While GA100 is made on TSMC's 7nm process (however much Nvidia like to moan about wafer prices, for their most important and very expensive data centre and AI chip they had the sense to go for the best process), from the specs I quoted from TPU earlier this card looks to be so cut down that it should just be able to use parts not suitable for any other products based on GA100.

There is no gaming card based on GA100 anyhow.

But the good thing is, The card would offer miners a very real alternative which would further saturate the gaming market by virtue of miners buying less gaming gpu’s? Well hopefully anyway.

 

[THX1138]

I work in a car parts extrusion plant in the midlands, management is in discussion about layoffs and four-day working weeks (fifth day not paid) after furlough scheme ends in September. There are signs things are getting worse. In our weekly memo the operations director said orders are dropping and are even lower than this time last year. They've stopped all capital investment in the plant and gone into survival mode. The situation is horrendous.

The logistics people who collectively decided to stop ordering chips for cars just because we had a lockdown for a couple of months early 2020 have been variously described as naive, incompetent and much, much worse depending on who you talk to.

Then they should be the first ones to go.

 

[Psycho Sonny]

But the good thing is, The card would offer miners a very real alternative which would further saturate the gaming market by virtue of miners buying less gaming gpu’s? Well hopefully anyway.

Not really every chip being used to make a mining GPU is a chip not being used to make a gaming GPU.

Also a lot of miners won't want the risk of having a gpu that cannot be sold on to a gamer to cover their costs.

 

[Psycho Sonny]

I work in a car parts extrusion plant in the midlands, management is in discussion about layoffs and four-day working weeks (fifth day not paid) after furlough scheme ends in September. There are signs things are getting worse. In our weekly memo the operations director said orders are dropping and are even lower than this time last year. They've stopped all capital investment in the plant and gone into survival mode. The situation is horrendous.

The logistics people who collectively decided to stop ordering chips for cars just because we had a lockdown for a couple of months early 2020 have been variously described as naive, incompetent and much, much worse depending on who you talk to.

Sorry to hear this. But this is a worldwide issue. Personally when I worked in procurement 15 years ago. I would normally order extra of the things that usually held up the manufacturing line especially if they were low cost. The only things I wouldn't would be the software licenses which could run into the hundreds of thousands each.

All logistics did in our place was plan what orders were made with what stock was on hand.

Procurement was in charge of buying everything.

 

[CashmereThoughts]

Not really every chip being used to make a mining GPU is a chip not being used to make a gaming GPU.

Also a lot of miners won't want the risk of having a gpu that cannot be sold on to a gamer to cover their costs.

Good points to be fair.

 

[KompuKare]

The logistics people who collectively decided to stop ordering chips for cars just because we had a lockdown for a couple of months early 2020 have been variously described as naive, incompetent and much, much worse depending on who you talk to.

But with the way JIT had been drilled into every manager over the past 30 years or so, did they really have a choice?
If thinking for themselves was never an option, then what is really to blame is the JIT orthodoxy. And didn't the whole just-in-time (and more importantly keep no inventory) really become popular in the early 1990s when oil was $10 a barrel?
Ironically, the early 1990s was when the USSR collapsed and I remember one thing the Soviets were efficient at: their occupancy rate for railway freight was really really high.
This was because they seldom moved empty railway cars around they place instead they'd wait weeks or months until the whole train was full. The total opposite of JIT. Very inefficient in its own way, but the constant delivery of small orders wastes a lot of energy at transport. JIT relies on cheap transport costs.And in the UK, that's almost all exclusively by road.

 

[wozzizname]

GPUs seem to be going out of stock again.
Maybe it’s just waxing and waning as deliveries land, but it’s a lot harder to buy a GPU this month than last.

I’ve been following the prices of a couple of cards on here, the 6800XT TUF has gone up by £100 in the last three weeks or so, and a couple of the 6700XT cards have also risen.

I think there’s lots of us with the ready cash to buy when prices come down to semi-sensible levels, but there’s obviously plenty of people desperate enough to pay the current inflated prices.

 

[Murphy]

But with the way JIT had been drilled into every manager over the past 30 years or so, did they really have a choice?

JIT got distorted from what the guy who invented it original intended, basically JIT got applied to everything in the supply chain when it was only meant to apply to commodity goods, goods that you could easily swap suppliers with. It was never meant to be used with something like semiconductors, where there's long lead times and typically a single supplier because, as we're now seeing, any disruption in supply causes you problems as you can't swap to another supplier.

I suspect this whole pandemic thing has caused a lot of companies to reassess how they've implemented JIT and we'll see companies holding stock of things that can't easily be swapped out for alternatives, probably not good for the whole GPU thing as not only do car manufactures have a backlog of cars needing computers but they'll also want to build up a buffer so something like what they're experiencing now never happens again.

 

[shamus21]

sample size of 1 doesn't mean the zotac is a lot better. you likley just got unlucky on the fe, lucky on the zotac or both.

the zotac is rated as one of the worst AIB cards using cheaper components than higher end AIB cards and worse than FE.

i know someone who has had the exact opposite experience even with a high end AIB card the FE was a lot better and no coil whine. whereas the top end AIB card had coil whine and the memory cooling is pants.

Just go`s to show you do not need all those high quality expensive component's to make a decent product regardless of what ever it is you are manufacturing.

 

[Psycho Sonny]

Just go`s to show you do not need all those high quality expensive component's to make a decent product regardless of what ever it is you are manufacturing.

No all you need is luck.

Or you can make your own luck by simply buying high quality components. They got extremely unlucky.

It even happens in F1 where a big teams car will fail during race or qualifying yet the small team who spent 10% they did won't.

You cannot just rely on luck to hope the cheap parts will be okay.

 

[Secret_Window]

Just for once, that is not the cause.
But the car manufacturers have largely only themselves to blame: they are so obsessed with just-in-time that keeping stock is alien to them. Then when Coronavirus hit and consumer spending initially nose-dived, they all miscalculated and cut back chip orders. Once they realised that their demand actually continues to be high (more people don't want to use public transport - pollution, congestion, and cities even more overrun by cards be dammed), they eventually ordered more chips but found themselves at the very back of the queue.
About the only parallels with Brexit is that nobody keeps any inventory so disrupting supply chains is very risky as UK2021+ is finding.

I work in a car parts extrusion plant in the midlands, management is in discussion about layoffs and four-day working weeks (fifth day not paid) after furlough scheme ends in September. There are signs things are getting worse. In our weekly memo the operations director said orders are dropping and are even lower than this time last year. They've stopped all capital investment in the plant and gone into survival mode. The situation is horrendous.

The logistics people who collectively decided to stop ordering chips for cars just because we had a lockdown for a couple of months early 2020 have been variously described as naive, incompetent and much, much worse depending on who you talk to.

Why do companies like these have just-in-time manufacturing when they usually are manufacturing at a fixed spec for most things? It seems idiotic, especially during a pandemic when there is turbulence to the global economy. I would understand it working for certain fresh foods where you can't keep stock for very long because they have a short shelf life, but why can't companies like these invest in some storage facilities and keep stock of parts they need all the time? It's like hospitals deciding to use just-in-time for all medical equipment like PPE and not stocking any when you are dealing with a pandemic... Surely the best security you have is it to keep stock and be as best prepared as you can? Sometimes I think all these decisions seem like an afterthought and that all of the difficulties will just sort itself out... The complacency is shocking.

 

[KNiVES]

Why do companies like this have just-in-time manufacturing when they usually are manufacturing at a fixed spec for most things? It seems idiotic, especially during a pandemic when there is turbulence to the global economy. I would understand it working for certain fresh foods where you can't keep stock for very long because they have a short shelf life, but why can't companies like these invest in some storage facilities and keep stock of parts they need all the time? It's like hospitals deciding to use just-in-time for all medical equipment like PPE and not stocking any when you are dealing with a pandemic... Surely the best security you have is it to keep stock and be as best prepared as you can? Sometimes I think all these decisions seem like an afterthought and that all of the difficulties will just sort itself out... The complacency is shocking.

That's actually how they used to do things before the Americans decided to start deifying Kiichiro Toyoda & copying his way of managing supply chains.
In normal times JIT works... but these aren't normal times.

 

[rumple9]

Why have money tied up in stock? Especially in the technology industry where prices change very fast