Intel Warns of Consumer Chip Shortages for Q3
Intel can produce enough chips but can't get enough ABF substrates.
Shortages of chips and components have plagued the high-tech industry for several quarters now and while semiconductor companies and their peers are investing in additional manufacturing capacities, there is no light at the end of the tunnel. This week Intel warned that in Q3 there will be unprecedented shortage of chips for consumer PCs.
"Persistent industry-wide component and substrate shortages are expected to lower CCG revenues sequentially," said George Davies, chief financial officer of Intel, said during Intel's Q2 2021 conference call with analysts and investors (via SeekingAlpha). "We expect supply shortages to continue for several quarters but appear to be particularly acute for clients in Q3. In datacenter, we expect enterprise, government and cloud to show further recovery in Q3."
Just several years ago Intel had issues producing enough silicon at its fabs, due to overwhelming demand for Xeon and high-end Core CPUs, so it expanded its manufacturing capacities. Today, Intel has enough semiconductor production capacities for its products made using both 10nm and 14nm fabrication processes, but there's another obstacle in packaging its chips: insufficient Ajinomoto build-up films (ABF) substrates supply.
The best CPUs and other modern processors and chipsets use laminated packaging, as well as chip substrates based on insulating, which are supplied by just one company, Ajinomoto Fine-Techno Co. While Ajinomoto can supply more or less enough films, actual makers of IC substrates cannot meet demand from all of their customers and became a bottleneck for a variety of chipmakers and chip packaging houses earlier this year. Intel has its own testing and packaging facilities but apparently cannot get enough substrates.
"We did a really good job of eating up a lot of our substrates, some of which we thought we would have available to us in Q3," Davis said.
Demand for PCs usually peaks in September – November, as people return to offices, whereas students return to schools. But demand for components starts to increase in the second half of June and peaks in August – September as PC makers build systems for the back-to-school and holiday seasons. Since Intel (and its partners) have limited substrate production and packaging capacities, their shipments to PC makers (and the channel) are going to be constrained while demand will go up. As a result, shortages of CPUs, chipsets and other components for client PCs are expected to be severe n Q3 2021.
Intel has to prioritize shipments of its datacenter-oriented Xeon processors both because of long-term contracts and because of margins. Since Intel's Xeon CPUs are physically bigger than Intel's client CPUs, shipping one of such datacenter chips means being unable to ship three or four client chips.
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In a bid to ensure that it can get enough substrates, Intel has invested in ABF substrate makers and also installed some of the equipment to finish production of ABF substrates in its own packaging facilities.
Intel is hopeful for Q4.
"In Q3, we could see we had a real supply challenge, it is acute," said Davis. "But Q4, we are doing everything we can to help our substrate suppliers increase supply, including finishing up some of their manufacturing in our own facilities, which is something we could do with as an IDM."
Anton Shilov is a contributing writer at Tom’s Hardware. Over the past couple of decades, he has covered everything from CPUs and GPUs to supercomputers and from modern process technologies and latest fab tools to high-tech industry trends.
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peachpuff "Intel has to prioritize shipments of its datacenter-oriented Xeon processors both because of long-term contracts and because of margins. "Reply
Margins... got it. -
InvalidError
When you have a production shortage and malleable production lines, shifting capacity towards higher-margin SKUs is the logical thing to do. It is the same reason lower-end GPUs come several months behind higher-end ones or get skipped altogether - there are still no signs of incoming 6500 or 3050 for the desktop a year after the top-end models launched.peachpuff said:"Intel has to prioritize shipments of its datacenter-oriented Xeon processors both because of long-term contracts and because of margins. "
Margins... got it. -
lazyabum PC chip production is regressing while phone/tablet chip production is progressing. Apple and Qualcomm are showing consumers deserve power while the big three reserve power for the powerful.Reply -
DSzymborski lazyabum said:PC chip production is regressing while phone/tablet chip production is progressing. Apple and Qualcomm are showing consumers deserve power while the big three reserve power for the powerful.
I'm totally sure that Apple and Qualcomm prioritizing the parts of the market that make them the vast majority of their profits is for totally egalitarian reasons.
The equally brave pizza place down the street is showing consumers that they deserve lunch while making zero data center CPUs for those fat cats. -
TerryLaze
At the current time dcg would need to have twice the margin than what ccg already has just to "break even" and make the same amount of money as the ccg.InvalidError said:When you have a production shortage and malleable production lines, shifting capacity towards higher-margin SKUs is the logical thing to do. It is the same reason lower-end GPUs come several months behind higher-end ones or get skipped altogether - there are still no signs of incoming 6500 or 3050 for the desktop a year after the top-end models launched.
Higher margins only make sense if you sell the same-ish amount of product.
Unless the margin for dcg actually is twice than the margin of ccg but even then they would only make as much money and not more.