Xbox Series X and S Shortages Have Microsoft Asking AMD for Help (gizmodo.com) 32
Supply issues have hamstrung the rollout of the latest generation of video game consoles. Even now, nearly two months after the Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S released, Microsoft is still scrambling to meet demand and has reportedly reached out to chipmaker AMD to fast-track production on its end. From a report: AMD manufactures the GPU and CPU for both consoles, so if it's able to push out its chips faster, Microsoft could, in theory, churn out more consoles by extension. As spotted by VGC, Microsoft is "working as hard as we can" to pump out more systems and has even contacted AMD for help, according to Xbox head Phil Spencer in a recent appearance on the Major Nelson Radio podcast hosted by Xbox Live director of programming Larry Hyrb "I get some people [asking], 'why didn't you build more? Why didn't you start earlier? Why didn't you ship them earlier?' I mean, all of those things," Spencer said. "It's really just down to physics and engineering. We're not holding them back: We're building them as fast as we can. We have all the assembly lines going. I was on the phone last week with [CEO and president] Lisa Su at AMD [asking], 'How do we get more? How do we get more?' So it's something that we're constantly working on."
Here's an idea (Score:5, Funny)
"I get some people [asking], 'why didn't you build more? Why didn't you start earlier? Why didn't you ship them earlier?' I mean, all of those things," Spencer said. "It's really just down to physics and engineering. We're not holding them back: We're building them as fast as we can. We have all the assembly lines going. I was on the phone last week with [CEO and president] Lisa Su at AMD [asking], 'How do we get more? How do we get more?' So it's something that we're constantly working on."
Just use half a GPU and half a CPU in each console. If it's going to work to speed up the covid vaccine rollout, it should help get Xboxes produced faster as well.
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oh my.
somebody is very sensitive to flushing inventory through the pipe before selling the new stuff.
why
Re:AMD doesn't make chips... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Microsoft isn't begging AMD to do anything. That's just PR bullshit. Every time there's a rollout of a popular, highly anticipated product, no matter what it is, there is ALWAYS a shortage. Always.
And it's not hard to understand why.
You think there's demand for 10 million Widgets, so you make 10 million, but you guessed wrong and you only sell 9 million. Now you're stuck with a million unsold Widgets. Not good for business.
Instead, you only make 8 million. And you sell all of them. No unsold Widgets
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The shortages are more severe for the new consoles this time because COVID disrupted supply chains and increased demand because more people are stuck at home.
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- COVID-19 disrupted supply chains.
- COVID-19 increased demand because more people are stuck at home.
- AMD released CPUs that are much more powerful than Intel at a lower cost than Intel.
- AMD released GPUs that are more or less equivalent to nVidia but at a lower cost.
- Microsoft released a new console that uses an AMD CPU and GPU.
- Sony released a new console that uses an AMD CPU and GPU.
- Apple's processors are also manufactured by TSMC, and this year they also added the M1 to their orders.
- Qualcomm's I
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I assume TSMC gives AMD a specific allocation. It is up to AMD to distribute that allocation among their needs. I doubt Xbox parts are among the most profitable for AMD though...
AMD isn’t ready to be a big chip maker (Score:2)
Re:AMD isn’t ready to be a big chip maker (Score:4, Informative)
1) Of the major players only Intel still vertically integrates with fabs, and Intel is rapidly falling behind. Going fabless has been essential for AMD, because it was far too small to support the kind of investment in fabs that is needed to keep up these days. GlobalFoundries is significantly bigger now than it was as an AMD unit and has the capital to compete with TSMC, and TSMC has the power to drive the technology and to build fabs faster than Intel can improve its processes. It's pure idealism that keeps Intel from spinning off its fabs. And hey, that's fine; there are other vertically integrated (much smaller) semiconductor companies and Intel still swings a big stick, the pendulum could swing the other way. It's just that today it doesn't look like that pendulum swings as far as it used to.
2) AMD can't do anything about the shortage of GDDR6 memory, and TSMC isn't the only player that makes it. It's an industry-wide shortage.
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AMD likely would've been able to keep its fabs if it hadn't nearly killed itself by first purchasing ATI and then releasing one of the worst microarchitectures ever in Bulldozer.
On the flipside, the fabless AMD of today is doing pretty darn well on both CPU and GPU fronts, so who can say whether retaining its fabs would've been the better long-term approach. Just because Intel has repeatedly FUBAR'd 10nm doesn't mean full integration is a bad thing.
Re:AMD isn’t ready to be a big chip maker (Score:5, Informative)
TSMC has bottle necked the whole industry with its slimline bottles, and that’s without a war with China.
TSMC is Taiwanese, not "China". So unless there's a military conflict with Communist China, the economic war won't affect TSMC output in Taiwan. And if there's a military conflict with China, then there are bigger things to worry about than chip production being affected.
Fabs are expensive, and take years to build. Currently there's a shortage of production because of the huge demand of CPUs/GPUs all in one year because of best in class (or in the case of GPUs, competitive) releases by AMD and Apple in addition to new gaming consoles being released. If TSMC builds out their fabs based on this peak demand, they could be saddled with very expensive unused capacity two years from now.
Also nobody expected Intel to fail so badly for so long in its fab technology.
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TSMC is Taiwanese, not "China".
You'd better not let China hear you say that.
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TSMC is Taiwanese, not "China".
You'd better not let China hear you say that.
Exactly. Look at what's happened to Jack Ma [forbes.com] when he criticized Xi and the Chinese government.
Then again, China has said they have no new domestic cases of covid, but Taiwan has reported cases. Ergo, Taiwan is not part of China.
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Taiwan is China; its China that isn't China. Taiwan is governed by ROC a legitimate republican government that is in exile, as a result of a coup by the PRC.
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Yeah, if we apply the strict reading that Taiwan shouldn't be accepted in the global trade market, it would be Taiwan (the real China) who would be a member but not Red China.
That nuance likely won't carry any weight in the organizations who bow the knee to the 'chicoms' though.
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Sort of, but shortages of drives, ram, processors... actually would be crippling to our military as it presently stands. Of course pumping out materiel has always been one of the most decisive factors in any protracted war, but the complexity of the supply chain these days makes it super difficult to sustain, or even to determine where you stand.
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It shoudn’t have let its spun off fab company Global Foundries give up on advanced nodes now it is stuck with the rest of the industry with TSMC. TSMC has bottle necked the whole industry with its slimline bottles
Actually is the other way around.
GloFo had the 7nm stuff already working (out of the lab and ready for production in low volume), but AMD dumped them for 7nm, going instead for TSMC and Samsumng (probably to save a buck or two, and, admitedly, to get to market faster).
Since it costs beeeellions of monnies to ramp up production of 7nm, and with no clear/commited customers, the sheiks owning GloFo took the sensible (from an economy point off view) decision to can 7nm and concentrate on refining the current vo
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Nah, it was simply due to GloFo's owners not wanting to continue to sink cash into it. They bought the company to make them money, but GloFo had been running at a loss since AMD sold it, and the R&D for 7nm put it even deeper into a hole with the revenue projections apparently not being sufficient. Then you add the cost of refinement of 7nm and investment into even smaller nodes... TSMC and Samsung have the pockets for that kind of investment, GloFo's owners don't.
That's why AMD went to TSMC for 7nm - t
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GF's 7nm absolutely was not working. They publicly admitted to giving up on the node. AMD invoked clauses from their Wafer Supply Agreement (WSA) with GF that permitted them to take wafers from TSMC in greater volumes to make up for what GF categorically failed to deliver to AMD (AMD was already taking wafers for Rome; Matisse was originally meant to be on GF's 7nm node).
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It shoudn’t have let its spun off fab company Global Foundries give up on advanced nodes
Yeah, because after AMD sold GloFo, of course it still controls what GloFo continues to do. Because that's exactly how companies work. /s
When did WccfTech invade /. FFS?
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Doesn't AMD still have like 30% of GloFo or something. Granted not a controlling interest but certainly and influential share holder.
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AMD has a 0% stake in GloFo. They completely divested.
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I am not convinced we'd even have AMD today if they had not sold off the fab business. AMD traded a disasters balance sheet for strong one in doing so but with some limits having de-verticalized some.
You also assume that AMD would have been able to internally scale production and its unclear they had the capital required to invest in that.
Right now what AMD has is what most of us call a high-quality problem. Way better to have demand you can't make product to meet, than to carry expensive production capaci
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AMD had no choice. They couldn't pay GF enough to finish the work on their 7nm node. Maybe if Mubadala had known that AMD's 7nm chips would sell this well, they would have taken on the costs associated with the node (as well as the failure risks) and plowed ahead. As it stands, even with current knowledge of how an old TSMC node can still sell like hotcakes two years after said node went into full commercial production, GF still has no plans to fab anything on a 7nm node. They will probably never roll o
They were late (Score:3)
They played chicken with Sony on pricing, and *both of them* failed. Given $500 was the safe estimate, announcing that in June, and letting retailers open preorders to measure the demand would have gone great, like every [cnn.com] other [youtube.com] console [cnn.com] before this cycle.
Don't say this is hindsight bias. They changed the rules, and it backfired. There is difference between: "hey TSMC we need 20 million units in 6 months" vs "we need them today".
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It wouldn't have changed a thing. MS is just a victim and a contributor to an industry shortage at the moment. MS can order all the consoles they want, if no one (NO ONE) can get GDDR6 memory they'd still be in the same place if they asked 6 months ago. Heck 6 months ago we were all in this place as well. The world just went through an unforseen spike in demand for gear (PC sales projected to increase by 50% this year despite a drop in 10% which was projected) along with some unprecedented new releases (abs