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The general consumer technology sector is going through the period a complicated phase that does not only concern PS5 and Xbox Series XIt has also been noticed in the low stock of long-awaited products like NVIDIA’s RTX 30, Ryzen 5000 or AMD’s Radeon RX 6800.
If we take a look at the stock of graphics cards we will notice the situation is not goodThe same goes for AMD’s more powerful processors (Ryzen 9 5900X and Ryzen 9 5950X). It is virtually impossible to find an available unit, and to make matters worse, the stock of the RTX 20 has been reduced to such an extent that it is almost impossible to find anything superior to an RTX 2060 Super at an “acceptable” price.
There are many theories circulating about what could have happened to get to this situation, but I think, in general, the key is in conjunction with facts, that is to say that there is not only one culprit, but several. On the one hand, we can think that the cryptocurrency boom, which seems to be experiencing a second golden age, could have affected the demand and stock of RTX 30 and RX 6000, but the truth is that, after all, the supply of both was minimal and the demand was very high. The same goes for Ryzen 5000.
It goes without saying that the current weaving, produced by the COVID pandemic-19, had a major impact on the supply chain e affected the production capacity of giants such as TSMC, a reality that, together with the growing demand produced by the most important launches of the largest in the sector, and the passage of the smartphone market to 5 nm, could have contributed to further limiting the stock of these products.
PS5 and Xbox Series X have also had a lot to do with the shortage, let’s see why
I know, at first glance, it may be difficult for us to establish a relationship between the launch of PS5 and Xbox Series X and the shortage of Ryzen 5000 processors and Radeon RX 6000 graphics cards, but I am convinced that you will understand immediately.
As many of our readers will know, PS5 and Xbox Series X use AMD APUs manufactured in the 7nm process, the same that is used both to produce the Ryzen 5000 and to give life to the Radeon RX 6000. AMD does not manufacture its own chips, but turns to TSMC, a giant that also works with other customers and therefore has to distribute its production capacity to “satisfy” everyone, even partially.
The conclusion to which this leads us is very simple, AMD can only access a certain number of silicon wafers, and must distribute the chip production it obtains from them to create the Ryzen 5000, Radeon RX 6000, and the PS5 and Xbox Series X APUs. The source of the news indicates that during the last quarter of the year, the Sunnyvale company has allocated a total of 80,000 silicon wafers to make the PS5 APU, Y 40,000 silicon wafers to do the same with Xbox Series X and Series S.
Obviously, it is a huge figure, nothing more and nothing less 120,000 silicone “cookies”. If we establish a proportion, this figure would represent between 65% and 70% of the total wafers that AMD gets from TSMC, which means that only 30% to 35% would go into production of the Ryzen 5000 and Radeon RX 6000 CPUs.
Why did AMD prioritize PS5 and Xbox Series X? For the money, of course
Let’s not forget it AMD is, after all, a companyand that like NVIDIA and Intel what you want is to earn money, and for that you have to maximize your income and profit margin. I know many of you have a clear idea, but it never hurts to remember it to give a small dose of reality to the fans of each brand.
Returning to the subject of wafers, to understand that priority that AMD has established and why PS5 and Xbox Series X have been the big beneficiaries, we need to talk about two fundamental questions: wafer-level architecture and profitability. When a company buys a silicon wafer, it pays not for functional chips, but for that wafer. This means that if you get 50 out of 100 possible functional chips, it will cost the same as another one that reported 80 out of 100 possible functional chips.
To maximize the benefits, AMD has prioritized PS5 and Xbox Series X APU designs as such the least complex and those with the highest success rate on the wafer. A Zen 2 processor like the one on both consoles is much easier to wafer than a Zen 3 CPU, and the same goes for the GPUs on both consoles, which have fewer active CUs than an RX 6800.
Second, AMD prioritized the Ryzen 5000 because, thanks to their MCM design, they have an acceptable success rate per wafer, and I would have put the RX 6000 last, with a minimum of wafers, in fact, because they use a monolithic GPU accompanied by Infinity Cache, complicating their transfer to the wafer and greatly reducing the success rate, resulting in a high cost and a very limited profit margin.
If you wonder what you can clear up from all this, I think the answer is simple, that you will have to arm yourself with patience buy a Ryzen 9 5900X-Ryzen 9 5950X, and that it may take even more patience to get an RX 6000, unless you’re willing to pay crazy resale prices, which, of course, I don’t recommend.
I think the best we can do right now is to wait and build patience. Speed up your PC a little more and mark the first quarter of 2021 as a date on which the current situation will gradually begin to improve.
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