Have you ever eaten at a restaurant with some friends and been stuck with the bill because they bailed? Well it looks like Nvidia is standing in the restaurant with the check, except their check is 300,000 GPU units that were created with the intent to sell to Bitcoin Miners. Nvidia CEO Jen-Sun Huang announced this data at COMPUTEX 2018. He also stated that the company would not be launching any new GPUs for “a long time”. It is a bit disturbing that we have been stuck with the Geforce 10 series of cards for two years now, but we have finally figured out why. The overestimation of how many GPUs would be required by Bitcoin Miners is very, very large indeed. It also appears based on reports from other sources that Nvidia also heavily bought GDDR5 which also now has an excess in lower-end GPUs that need to be turn into boards.
In a quote from Seeking Alpha, “Nvidia has overestimated pent-up gaming demand and underestimated the impact of declining mining demand,” before going into details on the state of GPU supply from Nvidia.
“How badly have they miscalculated? Enough to have to agree to take back 300,000 GPUs from a ‘top 3’ Taiwan OEM. This is quite notable news as Nvidia usually exerts massive influence over its partners and can be quite ruthless with allocations of new GPUs if partners step out of line. The fact that this partner returned these GPUs says a lot about the current state of supply in the channel.”
With this news in the here and now, don’t be surprised if Nvidia does launch something this year, because they do still need to stay relevant in the new GPU market. There is proof of something coming because of a deal signed between Nvidia and SK Hynix, and could include GDDR6 memory supplies.
Also, cooling fan manufacturer Power Logic has stated that it expects shipments to increase in the 3rd quarter. This company makes fans used by graphics cards brands all over the world and they probably have some idea about Nvidia’s current roadmap for 2018, especially with rumors of the Geforce GTX 1170 and 1180 GPUs.
Power Logic Chairman Hsu Wen-feng also pointed to Asian Games 2018 as a spot where they may have cause for a greater demand in newer GPUs. Heres hoping that the price won’t be as bad as the 10 series GPUs are currently.
