Biden administration determined to end the global chip shortages in the upcoming months

The chip shortages that initially started to affect the GPU market in late 2020 have been slowly crossing over to the PC and smartphone markets in the past few months. This situation seems to be very detrimental to AMD, since the company can barely provide any new supplies for its Radeon RX 6000 GPU series, Ryzen 5000 desktop PC processors and the newly-launched Ryzen 5000H laptop APUs. Intel and Qualcomm also seem to be struggling with shortages, while Nvidia’s high-end Ampere GPUs are still nowhere to be found. The good news is that the Biden administration seems to be fully aware of the situation and is committed to help end the global semiconductor shortages in the coming months. 

According to new statements released by the White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki, the Biden administration is "currently identifying potential chokepoints in the supply chain and actively working alongside key stakeholders in industry and with our trading partners to do more now." Moreover, sources close to Bloomberg claim that president Biden intends to sign an executive order for a comprehensive supply chain review that would last 100 days. The review is to be led by the U.S. National Economic Council and National Security Council and should focus on supply problems with semiconductor manufacturing and advanced chip packaging, as well as critical goods like minerals, medical supplies and high-capacity batteries for electric vehicles. Now that the Trump administration has been replaced with the Biden one, the trading tensions between the U.S and China are expected to cool off. However, most of the vital components and chips are still produced in Taiwan by TSMC, and the U.S. needs to be wary of its position regarding the political situation between China and Taiwan.

Meanwhile, CEOs from prominent companies like Intel, AMD and Qualcomm signed a letter addressed to president Biden, urging the new administration to increase government support for domestic chip production. The letter states that the U.S. “technology leadership is at risk in the race for preeminence in the technologies of the future, including artificial intelligence, 5G/6G, and quantum computing.” Another letter signed by 18 CEOs points out that the U.S. chip manufacturing share has decreased by 12% since 1990. Apart from increased semiconductor manufacturing funds and grants, the long-term solution for shortages should also include plans to build more TSMC and Samsung fabs on U.S. soil.

Buy the ASUS Dual NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 OC Edition on Amazon