The shortage of Intel processors, which has been plaguing the market for several months, will apparently begin to subside soon. Last year, Intel invested an additional $1,5 billion to expand its 14nm manufacturing capabilities, and it looks like these emergency measures will finally have a visible effect. At least in June, the company is going to resume supplies of entry-level processors to second-tier laptop manufacturers. Until now, these customers were almost completely cut off from purchasing such chips, but now Intel is starting to accept orders from them again.
Intel's modus operandi during shortages was to prioritize shipping high-margin products and satisfying large customers like Dell, HP, and Lenovo. Therefore, second-tier manufacturers were not able to purchase budget Intel processors and were forced to either wait or reorient their inexpensive laptop models to the AMD platform. Now the situation is changing: starting from June, Intel's entry-level processors will be available to customers who are not considered a priority by the company. The microprocessor giant officially informed all its partners about this.
However, this does not mean that the shortage is about to end. We are not yet talking about satisfying customer requests in full, but the supply situation should definitely improve. Intel CEO Robert Swan spoke about this directly during the quarterly report: βWe have expanded production to improve the situation in the second half of the year, but some product mix issues will still remain in the third quarter, although we will try to coordinate the available offers with the requests of our clients."
In addition to the expansion of 14nm production capacity in Oregon, Arizona, Ireland and Israel, a certain easing of the shortage should also occur due to the fact that Intel has begun shipping 10nm Ice Lake processors, which will primarily be aimed at the mobile segment. Their production started in the first quarter, and leading manufacturers will have to present the first laptop models based on them in the middle of the year. As part of its quarterly report, Intel announced that production volumes of 10nm processors exceed plans, which means that some Intel customers will be able to switch to more advanced chips without any problems, reducing purchases of processors produced using 14nm technology.
Intel's partners received the news of the upcoming increase in supplies of inexpensive 14nm processors with great enthusiasm. The first quarter for many laptop manufacturers was associated with a significant drop in sales due to short deliveries of chips. Now manufacturers are hoping to make up for lost time. Moreover, the recent announcements of new ninth-generation Core mobile processors and GeForce RTX 2060, GTX 1660 Ti and GTX 1650 mobile graphics accelerators should fuel consumer demand for mobile computers.
Source: 3dnews.ru