AI triggers PCB shortage for PC makers as order books full until 2030, costs 12x

tomshardware.com

21 points·akyuu··7 comments

Not even remotely true, terrible reporting by Tom's. AI PCB utilization isn't particularly high, cell phones and mobile devices consume an order of magnitude more PCB area in a given year, but that doesn't fit the current "AI bad" meta so any problem in the world is now AI's fault.

What actually happened is that Trump started a war in Iran, Iran sent missiles over to KSA, which blew up the petrochem facility who supplies 70% of the global supply of resins used in PCB manufacturing: https://finance.biggo.com/news/3xNDpZ4BtCxy99G55-nj

Nothing whatsoever to do with AI.

I’m so tired of this refrain. I long for the times where hardware was abundant and attainable for the consumer.

Maybe the plan is to take away the ability for people to buy completed so they instead rent compute in the form of a prompt. After the people stop using their brains, they won't need computers anymore!

Or it truly is a supply/demand issue and either A) AI demand slowing and/or B) the tens if not hundreds of billions Intel, Micron, Samsung and TSMC are sinking into new fabs will resolve the issue.

Oh a typo. Mobile autocorrect fumble. "completed" is supposed to read computers.

Don’t worry it will end soon, either the AI bubble bursts, or other chip makers hit the market, or what likely would happen is AI will be resource hungry and compute demanding that consumer grade tech won’t be enough.

Or AI agents discover the ability to improve AI software speed, rendering the 5060 Ti 16GB as capable as the RTX 5090 is today.

A software improvement could easily destroy the financial foundation of the current AI buildout.

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