We've touched the topic a couple of times but it's now confirmed by ASUS as well. With issues on 10nm, Intel is running out of space on 14nm, and they have a lot of processors and chipsets on that node. The fabrication shortage at 14nm means fewer processors fabricated, resulting in processors shortages on a global scale. And that drives up prices.
The current Coffee lake (Core 8000 series) is currently suffering from increased prices, some procs even have risen 40 to 60% in price, overall for the higher end product it's 15 to 25% of an increase. The news on this keeps stacking up and is now confirmed by the CEO of ASUS as well:
Asustek Computer has seen its shipments to the DIY sector and related motherboards affected by Intel's supply strategy for CPUs, with the prospects that the CPU shortages, particularly those for desktop PCs, will continue into the second quarter of 2019, according to company CEO Jerry Shen. The continued CPU supply crunch, escalating US-China trade disputes, and increasing competition in the notebook segment in Europe have pressed down Asustek's "operational visibility" for the fourth quarter of 2018 to the lowest level of 20% compared to an over 50% seen in previous years, Shen said. Although Intel has pledged to address the supply issues since September and has continued to pour investments to ramp up output from its 10nm process, the tight CPU supplies have not been solved as the US chipmaker has given the priority to the production of high-end Xeon and Core series CPUs, instead of CPUs for the entry-level or other consumer models, Shen indicated. However, with Intel maintaining its shipments of CPUs to the server and gaming PC sectors, Asustek's gaming PC business has seen little impact from the CPU shortfalls, Shen noted.
Intel already moved chipset fabrication of for example the H310C chipset back to 22nm, just to free up space at 14nm. Intel also outsourced production towards TSMC. 14nm Xeons and respective chipsets are facing shortages as well. Basically the shortages are not solely the effect of issues on the 10nm node, worldwide higher demand for chips is the main cause, and in fact maybe even a luxury problem for Intel. Intel also has extended desktop processors in 14nm, for example, the pending Core 9000 series will also be based on the very same 14nm fabrication node. Intel is simply sitting at this 14nm process longer than it expected.
We mentioned this before, this all is still good news for Intel, as they fabricate chips and there's already sold, to they ooze out products at maximum capacity. It's just on the consumer and business side that due to these shortages, prices jump up.
Intel processor shortages to continue into 2Q19 says ASUS
