Anyone who has tried to build or upgrade a gaming PC of late is likely to have encountered problems sourcing a key component – a graphics card. Thankfully, the supply chokehold is expected to ease over the course of 2022, with shipments of GPUs expected to rise by 10 per cent this year.
GPU shortages have become commonplace in recent years, a result of both wider supply chain problems as a result of the COVID pandemic affecting the technology sector, and cryptocurrency miners monopolising supplies to create mining rigs.
However, per Digitimes Asia, something approaching normal service is expected to resume as the year goes by. While acknowledging that the current Omicron variant of COVID-19 is still leading to shortages of product – as workers isolate, supply and manufacturing chains are impacted, while demand is boosted as more people are stuck at home with time to kill on video games – Digitimes says that “graphics card shipments worldwide are expected to grow at least 10 per cent on year in 2022.”
The surge may be in the latter half of the year though, as manufacturers expect shortages of end products to last until at least mid-2022. However, as cryptocurrency and blockchain technologies move away from proof-of-work models – which require hundreds of GPUs running to crunch numbers, the reduced demand from that area will also potentially free up supply for people who want to use their graphics cards to actually play games with.
The laptop sector is also expected to increase this year, with manufacturers such as Apple, Dell, HP, and Asus having booked manufacturing to capacity at chip partners for the next one to two years. Although consumer demand has slightly lowered here, enterprise demand has risen – potentially as a result of employers providing workers with better means to work from home – and the sector is expected to at least match 2021’s performance, and potentially also increase by 10 per cent this year.
