AMD’s targeting ‘more than our fair share of capacity’ to ease graphics card crisis

Coming off the heels of finalizing the biggest acquisition in AMD's history, CEO and President Dr. Lisa Su told Yahoo Finance she thinks we'll have to wait until the second half of 2022 before seeing anything that resembles graphics card relief in this great chip shortage. 

That aligns with what rival CEO, Jen-Hsun Huang of Nvidia, has said about its expected GPU supply. He said “we feel better about our supply situation” as they look towards the second half of this year, too.

According to the good doctor, the acquisition of semiconductor producer Xilinx should make for a more efficient supply chain—which means more products in customers' hands. 

The chip shortage has not only affected the availability of gaming hardware like consoles and GPUs but electronics in general in various industries like automotive and medical. Experts have predicted this chip scarcity could run well into the end of the year, or even into 2023.

When asked about the end of the chip shortage, Dr. Su said she “believes that the first half of this year will continue to be quite tight. But with the second half of this year, I think things will get a bit better […]We’re now planning multi-quarter, multi-years with our customers which makes for a more efficient supply chain… we hope to use that scale to ensure we get more than our fair share of capacity and support in the industry.”

Dr. Su also commented that she expects even more growth for AMD throughout this current gaming console cycle. Demand is only expected to increase and she also implied that sales for the consoles have yet to peak. 

That's big for AMD as it provides chips for both the Xbox Series X/S and Playstation 5 consoles. So yeah, you could say AMD has a vested interest. Whether this means that this is the year you might be able to buy a fancy new console when you want one remains to be seen, however. Fingers crossed!