Intel CEO makes dire prediction about chip shortage turnaround

By Eric Abent/July 23, 2021 3:38 pm EST

The current semiconductor shortage has undoubtedly frustrated a lot of people. Not only have shortages made some in-demand hardware exceedingly difficult to find, but it's even prompted manufacturers to raise prices in some cases. We've seen that happen in the GPU segment, where new NVIDIA and AMD cards are routinely priced above MSRP as manufacturers contend with supply constraints.

Predictions on when we'll come out of this shortage have been somewhat nebulous as well. NVIDIA has suggested in the past that the GPU shortage could last for the rest of this year, but there's also been talk of the shortage lasting until some point in 2022. Now, Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger has suggested that it may not be until 2023 before supply catches up with demand in prepared remarks read during a call with investors after the company's Q2 2021 financial results were released [PDF].

"On the other side of the equation, the strong demand environment continues to stress the supply chain," Gelsinger said after talking about positives we've seen in the world of computing lately. "While I expect the shortages to bottom out in the second half, it will take another one to two years before the industry is able to completely catch up with demand."

While he didn't say that he thinks the shortage will certainly last until 2023, his worst-case scenario puts us at mid-2023 before the semiconductor shortage clears up completely. But, of course, supply will begin to rebound well before it catches up with demand entirely, so while it might take as long as two years before we're completely out of the woods, it will start becoming easier to obtain things like CPUs, GPUs, and new consoles well before then.

For now, though, we remain in the midst of this shortage. Hopefully, it doesn't take quite as long as two years for supply to catch up with demand, but given that Intel's CEO has insight that we don't, we probably shouldn't expect things to get significantly better for quite some time regardless.