Intel and AMD chip shortage drives up prices and delays deliveries for six months

The omnipresence of artificial intelligence is hitting the processor market hard. A recent report indicates that both Intel and AMD are facing severe difficulties to meet the growing demand for enterprise hardware, a situation that is already causing significant price increases. In key markets like China, wait times to receive server processors have stretched to over six months, signaling a bottleneck that threatens to strangle the global supply chain.

This saturation is not an isolated event that affects a single manufacturer. While Intel faces long delivery times on its server products, AMD faces similar restrictions due to its dependence on TSMC. The Taiwanese foundry, in charge of manufacturing the EPYC lines, is currently overwhelmed, trying to satisfy the AI ​​supply chain. Even Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan acknowledged during the last earnings presentation that the company failed to meet the demands of hyperscalers due to these manufacturing limitations.

The home user will pay the price for the AI ​​fever

The immediate consequence of this business urgency is a change in manufacturers’ priorities. With big tech companies revamping their server fleets to accommodate new x86 architectures and AI capabilities, chip giants are forced to prioritize the business segment on the customer market. This strategy seeks to mitigate the lack of components in data centers, but leaves the consumer sector in a delicate position.

Analysts warn that this trend will have a negative impact on the availability of components for personal computers. As happened previously with graphics cards, the shortage of processors is expected spread to the retail marketcausing a general increase in prices (although it seems that things are stabilizing). This inflationary phenomenon would not be limited only to CPUs, but would also drag down other key components such as RAM and GPUs, complicating the outlook for users. gaming and those who plan to update their equipment in the short term.