Chip shortage may ease as early as 1H22, says Arm Taiwan
Chip shortages may start easing as early as the first half of 2022, according to CK Tseng, president for Arm Taiwan.
Tight capacity at foundries has led to shortages of many chips, which is unlikely to be relieved until at least the first half of next year, said Tseng at a press conference in Taipei on March 31.
The conference was held for the introduction of the new Armv9 architecture. It has been nearly a decade since the Armv8 architecture was introduced in October 2011.
The new Armv9 has a focus on security while delivering greater performance, and digital signal processing (DSP) and machine learning (ML) capabilities. Arm expects the new architecture to support 300 billion future chips delivered to the market over the coming decade. To date, Arm's partners have shipped more than 180 billion Arm-based chips, Tseng indicated.
The new Armv9 architecture is set to accelerate the move from general-purpose to more specialized compute across every application as AI, the Internet of Things (IoT) and 5G gain momentum globally, Tseng continued.
In addition, Arm disclosed it is partnering with Fujitsu to create the scalable vector extension (SVE) technology, which is at the heart of Fugaku - the world's fastest supercomputer. Building on that work, Arm has developed SVE2 for Armv9 to enable enhanced ML and DSP capabilities across a wider range of applications.
Foxconn, Marvell, MediaTek, Nvidia, NXP, Oppo, Samsung and TSMC are among the partners of Arm set to develop and make their chip solutions based on the new Armv9 architecture. "The Armv9 architecture will play a role as we design next-generation Dimensity 5G products with new capabilities, features and user experiences," MediaTek CTO Kevin Jou was quoted as saying in Arm's press release.