Chip giant AMD has been struggling to ship enough hardware to keep up with demand, especially with its RDNA2 graphics chip. However, the company's CFO, Devinder Kumar, denies that this is happening because AMD is prioritizing GPUs for cryptocurrency mining instead.
Speaking at the Deutsche Bank Technology Conference, Kumar says crypto demand is playing no part in RDNA2 GPU shortages:
“We do not prioritize our product or make them for the crypto folks is not for the gamers and that's a high priority from that standpoint. What's driven the growth, as you know, we had the Radeon 6000 Series high end GPUs introduced very competitive and that is driving the growth in the GPU space.”
While some are accusing the company of focusing on crypto mining GPUs, the shortage is more likely because of the demand of creating chips for the Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5. Both consoles have been hugely popular since launch last year. AMD has been working to keep up with demand for those devices, resulting in less GPUs available for retail.
AMD is the sole GPUs supplier to both Microsoft and Sony, so it is bound by a contract to keep building for those devices. In fact, the company predicts demand for the consoles will stay high until 2022. After-all, the 2021 holiday season is now just a couple of months away.
Growth
So, AMD is claiming its GPU business has grown despite some clear shortages in supply. Kumar also does not really answer why GPUs from the company have been hard to buy over the last year. Yes, there was an overall chip shortage during the pandemic, but AMD's shortages have lasted longer than the industry.
AMD claims simply shipping more expensive hardware, focusing on high-end equipment sales.
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Last Updated on February 14, 2022 8:19 pm CET by Luke Jones
