TSMC is reportedly increasing the prices for its silicon, which means that CPU and GPU prices are likely to go up this year. As reported by DigiTimes, the Taiwanese-based semiconductor manufacturer has informed its largest customers, including tech giants such as Apple, AMD, and Nvidia, that it plans to raise pricing quotes of its nodes by up to 20%. This increase in manufacturing will also impact the consumers as companies may increase the price of their products. Outside of an ongoing chip shortage, which is expected to drag well into next year, TSMC has also noted other reasons for increasing the prices of its chips. This includes material costs, freight, and logistics. As Tom’s Hardware points out the price hike will significantly impact AMD as the company uses TSMC to manufacture its CPUs and GPUs. AMD CPUs start with processors that use the Zen 2 architecture and its forthcoming Zen 4 architecture, which is slated to arrive in a new line of desktop CPUs sometime this year. Despite the report omitting any references to graphics cards, Nvidia and especially AMD will likely increase MSRPs for its graphics cards. Though DigiTimes reported that Nvidia has already made prepayments to TSMC for long-term orders of the 5nm silicon. The news comes at an interesting time in particular for the GPU market as both AMD and Nvidia have announced new desktop graphics cards this month, including the RTX 3090 Ti, which was announced at CES 2022. While Nvidia promised to share more information in February, reports suggest the release date for the upcoming Nvidia RTX 30 flagship might have been pushed back. Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 TiTaylor is the Associate Tech Editor at IGN. You can follow her on Twitter @TayNixster.
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