Intel CEO explains reasons behind the prediction.
While the world is slowly recovering out of the pandemic, it looks like the chip availability is not going to recover that soon.
As per a recent interview to CNBC, Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger has said that they don’t expect the shortage of chips to stop before 2023 due to strong demand.
He mentions that the shortage is badly affecting not just computer processors, but it’s also having an impact on Wi-Fi, LCD and even data centers. Gelsinger goes further to explain how the situation is at its worse right now but is expected to improve as we move forward:
“We call it match sets, where we may have the CPU, but you don’t have the LCD, or you don’t have the Wi-Fi. Data centers are particularly struggling with some of the power chips and some of the networking or ethernet chips.”
“We’re in the worst of it now, every quarter next year we’ll get incrementally better, but they’re not going to have supply-demand balance until 2023.”
Chips are used everywhere, by everyone
Computer chips are not limited to just computers, consoles and mobiles anymore. Not only are they are used in Wi-Fi routers and Televisions as mentioned above, but they are used in all kinds of consumer electronics and even vehicles, with their shortage having a big impact on their availability and sales.
What’s causing this shortage has many reasons behind it. From increase in demand due to pandemic induced lock-downs to decrease in supply due to closure of manufacturing industries.
The hardest hit are the GPUs used in computer graphics cards, which has skyrocketed the prices of graphics cards to twice or even thrice their MSRP value. Only recently are we seeing some reduction in their prices.
ARM Taiwan’s president CK Tseng had said in April that chip shortages are going to last at least till the first half of 2022.
Here is hoping that chip shortages are eased faster than that. Till then, we have to endure with it.
