I found this

https://www.reuters.com/article/chips-shortag … t-idUSKBN2BN30J

which is mostly about demand related to the pandemic combined with sanctions on China* and also the impact of underinvestment

one thing very noticeable from the pandemic is that all supply chains in just about every industry are

1) incredibly interlinked, there are several 'weakest links' in almost all of them
2) very 'just in time', there is almost no stockholding and it takes a very short time for things to run out completely
3) flexible enough to recover, despite the above two the various participants in a supply chain tend to 'find a way' after some weeks or months although usually with increased costs

.
*(which will simply lead to China becoming ever less dependant on other countries, while other countries become ever more dependant on them)

Our local dairy has an ample supply of hot chips.

GPU mining is the main player in the GPU "shortage". There are people that have bots buying up the retail cards as soon as they are in stock and then they are reselling them on eBay for huge markups.

gerry wrote on 2021-05-25, 07:49:

I found this […]
Show full quote

I found this

https://www.reuters.com/article/chips-shortag … t-idUSKBN2BN30J

which is mostly about demand related to the pandemic combined with sanctions on China* and also the impact of underinvestment

one thing very noticeable from the pandemic is that all supply chains in just about every industry are

1) incredibly interlinked, there are several 'weakest links' in almost all of them
2) very 'just in time', there is almost no stockholding and it takes a very short time for things to run out completely
3) flexible enough to recover, despite the above two the various participants in a supply chain tend to 'find a way' after some weeks or months although usually with increased costs

.
*(which will simply lead to China becoming ever less dependant on other countries, while other countries become ever more dependant on them)

It's kind of messed up all in all... I was aware that messing with China would result in higher prices overall, however the non-stocking thing was something that I was not thinking about.

cyclone3d wrote on 2021-05-25, 08:08:

GPU mining is the main player in the GPU "shortage". There are people that have bots buying up the retail cards as soon as they are in stock and then they are reselling them on eBay for huge markups.

But that is ready made products and not chip shortages as such, if you think about it. I was mostly thinking about chip shortages for people who are building stuff from scratch. The hobby and homebrew market seems to be the area that are hardest hit by this. The big companies suck up the few stock's that are, leaving privates to not be able to source parts for projects.

It's all a conspiracy against me personally.
I find myself wanting to buy a decent modern graphics card for the first time in 20 years, nothing cutting edge something round the GTX1060 or RX580 mark.
yeh I'll wait I'm not paying 3 times the price for a card then when it was new.

Maybe this is the casue of retro computing getting more popular?

chinny22 wrote on 2021-05-25, 09:01:

It's all a conspiracy against me personally. I find myself wanting to buy a decent modern graphics card for the first time in 20 […]
Show full quote

It's all a conspiracy against me personally.
I find myself wanting to buy a decent modern graphics card for the first time in 20 years, nothing cutting edge something round the GTX1060 or RX580 mark.
yeh I'll wait I'm not paying 3 times the price for a card then when it was new.

Maybe this is the casue of retro computing getting more popular?

I was asking about chip shortages, and not the lack of ready made products. 😉 It is really a giant PITA for the homebrew/hobbyists market, that chips are in shortage these days. I have even seen resistors with specific value going out of stock and being out of stock for several month's now. Like I wanted to buy a complete set of parts for my ATX64 build, and 470 ohm hole through resistors have been out of stock for a couple of month's now at Reichelt in Germany. They have announced restock around this time. But 470 ohm hole through? And specific capacitors as well. As for chips... Then the PiStorm is a great example of chip shortages. On discord they have reported that big companies simply dry out the stock at resellers all around.

Something is to blame.... And of course fire's and Covid-19 is a giant factor. But what else?

EDIT:
And some pinheader raiser/extender's are also difficult to get. Like 40-pin with long legs and the more rare 36-pin ones with round precition turned pins. Those are near impossible to get, unless you look for Adafruit branded ones.

yes, from a hobby perspective there's no point (in my view) doing anything that new or with new components right now, interesting that the problem has reached into such things as resistors too! But then that's the nature of these delicate interlinked supply chains, if one part falters all parts falter.

of course its possible to get stuff still but for me I'd just leave it all alone for 6 months, that's a guess as to when things will start flowing better again, although prices may stay raised. Patience is the thing hobbyists will need for a while

for older but not collectable electronics, eg stuff from early 64 bit era relating to computers I don't think its affected, that era simply isn't an alternative for someone otherwise willing to compromise on an all new system, for instance you might see increased competition on ebay for a 3-5 year old graphics card but not for a 10 year old one

The automotive industry (self driving cars and as a safety byproduct of this development the de-integration of electronics functions, which result in demand for multiple processor silicon per unit etc), takeoff in cloud computing (demand for server GPUs/ASICs for AI) and cryptominers (huge demand for GPUs/ASICs for mining) are to blame for an unexpected surge in demand during the pandemic. Everyone expected demand to plummet during the pandemic so all investments were put on hold. Then came this HUGE demand for silicon nobody expected and the producers are caught with their pants down. There are investments in the pipleine to bring extra capacity to the market but those kinds of developments won't have any material effect before 2024 or so, so expect a lot of shortages for another year or so.

chinny22 wrote on 2021-05-25, 09:01:

It's all a conspiracy against me personally. I find myself wanting to buy a decent modern graphics card for the first time in 20 […]
Show full quote

It's all a conspiracy against me personally.
I find myself wanting to buy a decent modern graphics card for the first time in 20 years, nothing cutting edge something round the GTX1060 or RX580 mark.
yeh I'll wait I'm not paying 3 times the price for a card then when it was new.

Maybe this is the casue of retro computing getting more popular?

Maybe, just maybe, the upcoming Nvidia LHR line may end up getting more sanely priced, so if you won't be mining you may want to check those out. That said, I don't know if they'll do LHR versions of 1000 and 2000 series cards. I know some of those are still in production but I doubt nVidia would go to the trouble of designing new silicon and firmware for these..

You underestimate my ego and the levels people will go to screw me over!

But seriously, it's not just the electronics sector, Construction especially but not limited to cement is another area suffering shortages, a lot of the causes are the same:
- Demand outstripping supply levels even if everything was normal.
- Lack of available raw materials either due to closed or reduced output of plants/mines due to Covid.
(Nigeria even halted exports to try and keep up with local demand)
- Increased shipping times as freight companies are also experiencing high demand (thanks to online shopping)
- Factories struggling to produce enough product and get into the retail marker for all the reasons above

I've no doubt just about all sectors that rely on a global supply chain are affected to some degree

appiah4 wrote on 2021-05-25, 10:17:

Maybe, just maybe, the upcoming Nvidia LHR line may end up getting more sanely priced, so if you won't be mining you may want to check those out. That said, I don't know if they'll do LHR versions of 1000 and 2000 series cards. I know some of those are still in production but I doubt nVidia would go to the trouble of designing new silicon and firmware for these..

oh cool, didn't know about this!
I decided I'll give up for now and see how things are end of the year, lucky I have enough retro machines to keep me busy.
And if LHR brings prices to a more reasonable level either creating less demand on the 2nd hand market or cards themselves I'll be happy!

Worst part is that the shortages on new models also increases the prices on older parts. I bought a used gtx 1070 8gb for 200 EUR before the RTX 30 series launched. At the moment that same model 1070 is listed for 400 to 500 EUR! It's insane.

I remember reading somewhere that a drought in Taiwan is also causing the problems. Really it seems like a "perfect storm" of events happening.

Maybe, just maybe, the upcoming Nvidia LHR line may end up getting more sanely priced,

Never. LHR has protection only against Ethereum, which will anyway abandon proof-of-work model soon enough. So miners will just switch to another prospective crypto.
Not to mention that plain old scalpers won't disappear too. Nvidia won't be able to saturate demand for new cards anytime soon.

I also was thinking to buy a "modern" middle-low end card but with a bit more power than my GT610 to boost the old Socket 775/DDR3 board to just try some modern tech demos and modern graphic not necessary to play games I don't care anymore. Prices are getting seriously ridicolous for cards that might not be that much faster than the 2013 GT610 itself in the 2021.. I never wanted to build a modern config but come on.. today I was asking in a real store the price for a 1050ti card and no way.. even a GT1030/2GB was seriously too expensive..

A major factor is that there was a big fire in a chip factory some time ago, and getting that repaired is taking longer than expected:

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-56486242

Short version: turns out that short supply chains with single points of failure are not a good idea when you want resilience...

386SX wrote on 2021-05-25, 17:45:

I also was thinking to buy a "modern" middle-low end card but with a bit more power than my GT610 to boost the old Socket 775/DDR3 board to just try some modern tech demos and modern graphic not necessary to play games I don't care anymore. Prices are getting seriously ridicolous for cards that might not be that much faster than the 2013 GT610 itself in the 2021.. I never wanted to build a modern config but come on.. today I was asking in a real store the price for a 1050ti card and no way.. even a GT1030/2GB was seriously too expensive..

You could always buy one of those fake 1050Ti cards from China for like $150 on eBay and then get your money refunded. You would end up with most likely a 750Ti for free.

GALAX RTX 3060 LHR has been listed on Oversystem website with a price tag of 1,080,000 KRW (966 USD)