The latest in the global semiconductor shortage – The Verge

Samsung and AMD’s profit slump suggests industry trouble for chipmakers

2022-10-08T11:00:00-04:00

The downturn in the chip industry started in the summer months, as crypto crashes caused blockchain miners to flood the market with previously hard-to-find graphics cards. Almost overnight, demand eased up and caused graphics hardware prices to drop by almost half. Nvidia's CEO Jensen Huang admitted in August that the company made too many graphics cards that now it has to sell them for less money. But Nvidia isn't alone in this mess.

Just last year, the only story about chips was that manufacturers couldn't make enough of them to meet the strong demand for consumer electronics, cars, and other products that require semiconductors. But even …

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President Joe Biden speaks after groundbreaking for Intel’s $20 billion semiconductor plant

2022-09-09T14:23:46-04:00

President Biden speaks in Ohio following the groundbreaking ceremony for Intel’s new $20 billion semiconductor plant. | Photo by SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images

President Joe Biden traveled to Ohio on Friday to celebrate the groundbreaking of Intel's new $20 billion semiconductor plant, one of the first domestic chip-making facilities to come out of the recently passed CHIPS and Science Act.

Intel's Friday groundbreaking ceremony kicked off construction of what the company has called the "largest silicon manufacturing location on the planet." It's part of Intel's plans to invest $100 billion in Ohio over the next 10 years. The company has said that the project could take more than 7,000 workers to build the facility that is expected to house two separate factories and, once finished, employ 3,000 w …

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Biden plans a speedy rollout for chips funding

2022-08-25T12:12:01-04:00

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President Joe Biden isn't wasting any time in rolling out the $280 billion law to boost domestic semiconductor manufacturing. On Thursday, Biden signed an executive order to get the money flowing out to companies like Intel who want to build fabrication sites in the US.

Biden officially signed the CHIPS and Science Act into law two weeks ago, but Thursday's order sets the sweeping American innovation project into motion. Biden's swift implementation signals the administration's urgency to boost US competitiveness against China and alleviate an incessant chip shortage that's affected a wide variety of industries like automakers and gaming de …

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Biden signs $280 billion CHIPS and Science Act

2022-08-09T10:57:57-04:00

President Joe Biden signed the CHIPS and Science Act on Tuesday, writing into law the $280 billion package that includes $52 billion in funding to boost US domestic semiconductor manufacturing.

"Today is a day for builders. Today, America's delivering," Biden said during the White House signing ceremony on Tuesday. "The CHIPS and Science Act is a once in a generation investment in America itself."

The bipartisan deal to revive American innovation in opposition to growing Chinese technological dominance comes amid an ongoing global semiconductor shortage. The shortage has become an incentive for manufacturers like Intel to invest in new pl …

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The GPU shortage is over

2022-07-01T17:45:00-04:00

These cards are now worth just over $1,000, well under MSRP — down from $2,570 last March. | Photo by Sean Hollister / The Verge

For nearly two years, you've had to be incredibly lucky, skilled, or patient to get an Nvidia or AMD graphics card at MSRP. We've liveblogged and livetweeted that hell of trying to buy a GPU online, fighting against an army of bots to navigate the buggy websites of retailers who didn't have enough reason to care.

But, yesterday, I did the unthinkable. I saddled up to Best Buy's website eight hours after the retailer's weekly drop and bought an RTX 3070 Ti Founders Edition for its $599 MSRP.

I had a $499 RTX 3070 Founders Edition in my cart, too. And those finds weren't a fluke: both of those GPUs were still available when we checked back t …

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Intel CEO now says the chip shortage will ‘drift’ into 2024

2022-04-29T17:12:22-04:00

Six months after predicting the global chip shortage would last until at least 2023, Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger is now suggesting it might be 2024 before we're fully out of the woods.

"[W]e believe the overall semiconductor shortage will now drift into 2024, from our earlier estimates in 2023, just because the shortages have now hit equipment and some of those factory ramps will be more challenged," he told CNBC on Friday.

But while that sounds a little doom-y and gloom-y, you should know that the "chip shortage" is an involved, evolving situation that doesn't affect every kind of chip at every time. Some industries and some kinds of parts ha …

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Nvidia and AMD GPUs are returning to shelves and prices are finally falling

2022-04-19T09:30:00-04:00

The cards in this photo are now worth $1,569 — down from $2,570 last March. | Photo by Sean Hollister / The Verge

For nearly two years, netting a PS5, Xbox Series X, or AMD Radeon and Nvidia RTX graphics cards without paying a fortune has been a matter of luck (or a lot of skill). At its peak, scalpers were successfully charging double or even triple MSRP for a modern GPU. But it's looking like the great GPU shortage is nearly over.

In January, sites including Tom's Hardware reported that prices were finally beginning to drop, and drop they did; they've now dropped an average of 30 percent in the three months since. On eBay, the most popular graphics cards are only commanding a street price of $200-$300 over MSRP. And while that might still seem like a …

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Here’s how bad the chip shortage is, according to the White House

2022-01-25T14:10:14-05:00

Today, the White House is saying out loud what you've likely already heard: the chip shortage won't end anytime soon. "We aren't even close to being out of the woods," said US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo in a briefing with reporters today, according to Bloomberg, The Washington Post, and others.

Her comments come alongside a new Department of Commerce report that cites chipmakers who "did not see the problem going away in six months," which also isn't exactly news: chipmakers like Nvidia and AMD have repeatedly suggested the shortage wouldn't ease until the second half of 2022, while Intel has said it might not end until 2023.

But the …

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At long last, Nvidia and AMD GPU street prices are beginning to drop

2022-01-24T17:42:21-05:00

We're not out of the woods yet - not even close - but it looks like the prices of Nvidia and AMD GPU prices may finally be coming down. Tom's Hardware in the US and 3DCenter.org in Germany have been charting eBay and local retail prices, respectively, and they're each seeing the same thing: a substantial dip for nearly every new graphics card that Nvidia and AMD make.

Want an Nvidia RTX 3080? Just two months ago, that might have cost you $1,773 on the street - over two and a half times the manufacturer suggested retail price. As we reported in November with our own chart, that was typical of the hottest graphics cards, and Tom's Hardware sh …

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The global chip shortage is partially to blame for Final Fantasy XIV’s long queues

2021-12-07T16:48:00-05:00

Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker. | Image: Square Enix

Many players eager to jump into Final Fantasy XIV's highly anticipated Endwalker expansion have hit big queues since the game launched in early access on Friday. Part of the reason for the long waits is that the global chip shortage has prevented Square Enix from getting enough servers to handle demand, according to a blog post from producer and director Naoki Yoshida.

"When it comes to adding new Worlds, we need tens of 'server machines' for every World that we add," Yoshida says. "Server machines are high-performance computers, which utilize numerous semiconductors. However, due to the COVID-19 countermeasures currently in place, many fac …

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