“Demand for graphics cards exceeds supply throughout 2021”

It has probably not gone unnoticed that there is a crying shortage of computer hardware and then perhaps mainly graphics cards, which in the last six months have been practically impossible to get hold of. SweClockers has previously reported that the shortage will persist throughout 2021, something that is now confirmed by none other than Nvidia’s CFO Colette Kress.

We expect demand to continue to exceed supply for much of this year […] Our operations team is agile and executing fantastically. We expect our supplies to increase as the year progresses. – Colette Kress, ekonomichef på Nvidia

In conversations with investors, Kress says that Nvidia is working feverishly to meet demand and that they envisage that the situation will gradually improve during the year. The CFO also claims that supply will improve during the second quarter of the year, but with demand in mind, it is far from a guarantee that it will be easier for enthusiasts to get a graphics card in the Geforce RTX 3000 series.

At the same time as the demand from gamers far exceeds the supply, the mining of cryptocurrencies takes a share of the graphics cards that become available. In response, Nvidia has tried to block the Geforce RTX 3000 series to make them less efficient for that type of computing, while releasing a new CMP series dedicated to mining.

We now expect CMP revenue to be approximately $150 million, higher than the $50 million included in our fiscal Q1 outlook. Up side to CMP is not displacing supply from our other platforms. It is incremental.

At the same time, Nvidia states that CMP does not affect the production of consumer-oriented graphics cards from the Geforce family. Kress talks about CMP in terms of incremental sales, which in economic terms means that something extra is added on top of existing sales. In the context on top of other product categories such as Geforce, Tesla and Quadro.

That the CMP series does not affect Geforce is something SweClockers has previously written about. The graphics circuits in Nvidia’s latest Geforce RTX 3000 series are manufactured by Samsung on its 8-nanometer technology, while the CMP series is based on older circuits that were originally housed in the RTX 2000 series and are manufactured on TSMC’s older 12-nanometer technology.

The exception is the top model CMP 90HX which is based on Ampere and the circuit GA102. According to Nvidia, this should not qualify for use in Geforce graphics cards, which means that CMP 90HX is based on those GA102 circuits with major manufacturing defects that do not meet the requirements to meet Nvidia’s set specifications for RTX 3080.

While statements like these in many cases should be taken with a pinch of salt, there is reason to believe Kress’ statement to investors. As a US listed company, it is a very serious crime to bring investors to light and the financial consequences would probably be much greater than what Nvidia would gain from a statement to appease frustrated enthusiasts. The statement should therefore be seen as an unequivocal statement that the CMP series has no effect on the availability of Geforce graphics cards.

Source: PCMag

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