GPU Shortage: Effects on Gamers and the Rest of the World
Mario Barahona
Kean University
PS : Scope/Method of Political Science
Dr. Jacqueline Keil
March 19, 2021
Order any type of Service We Provide
We are the best assignment service that can satisfy student’s demands in different scientific fields. We perform tasks of any kind. Our specialists provide diverse custom assignment writing services to students from all over the world every day. You can contact us for assistance with:
- Essays of any type (application, scholarship, argumentative, personal, informative, persuasive, compare and contrast, narrative, analytical, cause and effect, critical, process, descriptive, expository essays);
- Homework,
- Assignments,
- Reviews of all types (for a book, an article, or a film),
- Reports,
- Annotated bibliography,
- Projects,
- Thesis,
- Term papers,
- Presentations,
- Lab works,
- Research papers,
- Speeches,
- Critical thinking,
- Capstone projects;
- plan;
- Coursework’s;
- Dissertations.
The list is far from complete!
Representatives of our student assignment service are connoisseurs of the peculiarities of presentation in regards to academics. Your college assignment will never turn out an untoward surprise! Whether you need research for high school, an undergraduate program, or a Master’s or Doctoral degree, you will get exactly what you are looking for to sound smart and well-informed.
If you are pressed for time, request our experts!
We are your academic saver. It is a perfect solution for people who need academic help but has no professionals nearby to provide it. Just redirect your home tasks to us and forget about any educational issues. With us, you will get 100% plagiarism-free content delivered on time by an experienced specialist in a particular field.
When you order professional assignments here, you will get:
Original custom papers. We value your academic reputation. Just as well, we value the years of thorough work on our reputation for reliability and never compromise the originality of delivered papers. We will never endanger both. Every custom assignment is written from zero – the only possible first stage of work on the order is research. We apply the latest plagiary checking tools on the final stage, so plagiarism has no chance to emerge in your college assignment writing.
Control over the order completion. To make the process of collaboration comfortable and efficient, we offer our clients to choose the writer themselves taking into account all the requirements and the budget. For you to save nerves, having entrusted your fateful task to some qualified “stranger”, we enable communication with the assigned writer in the process of order completion.
Affordable assistance. . help with college assignments. We are eager to help you start investing in your career growth today. That is why our service is so affordable. We don’t charge to pay for the latest marketing tricks or advertisements – we choose the best experts in the labor market who write great custom papers in any area, level of complexity, and time frame. Our client’s grateful feedback is a top advertising trick.
On-time delivery. The quality of a paper is only valued when it is delivered within the determined time frame – you will get your custom assignment writing service in time and have a couple of days to revise it and ask for changes in case they are needed. And you will still have time to learn the material.
Protection. We value your trust and take all measures needed to keep your private and banking details safe. We offer only well-tested payment methods. Due to the system of encryption and protected servers, no third party can have access to your data.
Custom support 24/7. We do our best to make the process of collaboration comfortable for the customer. Our “write my assignment” help is always here for you to provide a solution to your problems, give you a prompt answer to any question, and offer clarification as to any issue related to the services. Feel free to contact us anytime!
If you feel that your dissatisfaction with student life is growing every day and you just feel exhausted, don’t hesitate to change the situation for the better today. Order your first assignment from reliable custom assignment services today to evaluate the advantages.
Having seen the difference once, you won’t want to go back to your previous lifestyle. You deserve to find fulfilment in other spheres of your life, have hobbies, spend time with close people but continue making progress. It is possible when you have a professional helper. Don’t put off your life for someday after graduation!
GPU Shortage: Effects on Gamers and the Rest of the World
Introduction
GPUs (graphics processing units) are one of the most important computing technologies today. They are designed to enable parallel processing and their application has become vast in rendering graphics and video. GPUs’ major target buyers are gamers (they are best known for their gaming capabilities), creative producers, and artificial intelligence experts (Intel, 2021). Typically, a GPU consists of hundreds of tiny cores. As they operate collectively, these cores crunch through the data in the application they are running in. It is the highly parallel design that gives GPUs outstanding computing performance (Boston Limited, 2021). The year 2020-21 has marked a season of frustrations for gamers due to the increasing GPU shortage in the market. While this shortage lasts, gamers will have to grapple with supernormal upsurge of GPU prices. Nonetheless, the key point of frustration is what has largely been termed as paper lunch. It describes the growing promise by GPU manufacturers of the availability of the product in sufficient supply, but the promise is taking the longest to be fulfilled. RTX 3060, 3070, 3080 by Nvidia, one of the major GPU manufacturers, as well as 6800XT and RX 6800 by AMD, yet another key manufacture, have been incredibly difficult to get (The Verge, 2021). They are selling as instantly as they appear. Meanwhile, to deal with the inflation of GPU prices, manufacturers such as AMD are selling the products directly on their websites at normal market prices (The Verge, 2021). On the other hand, Nvidia has commented that supplies of GPUs ‘will likely remain lean through Q1-2021 (The Verge 2021).’ But what exactly has caused this growing issue of GPU shortage causing frustrations to gamers in America and across the world? This study argues that politics and the effects of the COVID19 pandemic are central to this issue.
Topic/Concept
Looking into various studies on the issue of GPU shortage reveals that heavy trade restrictions brought forth by the Trump administration have had a huge effect on GPU supply, on the one hand (Pressman, 2021) (The Verge 2021). On the other hand, studies have indicated that the COVID 19 has had two-dimensional effects contributing to the ripple effect concerning GPU shortage (Pressman, 2021) (The Verge 2021). On one dimension, the outbreak of COVID 19 that led to the growing call for ‘stay home, stay safe’ triggered an instant rise in demand for gaming products as gaming became the ideal way to spend the surplus time, otherwise, spent at work (Pressman, 2021). In the second dimension, the halting of economic activities to curb the spread of pandemic meant that supplies such as chips and GPU imports that complemented domestic supply were cut short (The Verge 2021). Borders were closed and so was the global economy (The Verge 2021). In other words, this meant a decrease in the supply of such products at a time when they were highly needed.
One of the crises the Biden administration is currently dealing with is to try to fix adverse economic effects inherited from the Trump administration. According to Pressman (2021), the political tension between Beijing and Washington saw the United States impose heavy trade restrictions or tariffs on imports from China. One category of products that were affected by these restrictions was electronics. Taxes for such products and particularly the graphic cards rose a record high to 25 percent. According to The Verge (2021), before trade tensions between the two countries, products such as graphic processing modules were initially exempted from import taxes until the later expiry of exemption by the end of 2019. The high taxation on imports, majorly from China, resulted in almost an equal rise in prices of the affected products with sellers of these products choosing to transfer the increased cost of taxation to customers. As a result, a company like Apple cut its reliance on Chinese GPUs it used as components to some of its products majorly to avoid playing in between the United States and China political and trade wars. Such indicates the extent to which politics, in the sense of unfavorable government policy on imports, has jeopardized an adequate supply of GPUs, particularly in the United States, thus contributing to the current crisis.
COVID 19 pandemic has stimulated both supernormal demands of GPUs and as well affected their supply. According to Pressman (2020), ‘the COVID 19 pandemic unexpectedly spurred a huge tech buying spree’ ‘after years of tepid demand for most tech gear.’ Pressman (2021) further records that computer sales went above 302 million units a rise by 13 percentage points from the previous year and the highest rise since 2014. During the same period (the period of corona outbreak) sales of webcam nearly rose to 360% as a result of people working from home. On the other hand, The Verge (2021) records that ‘with 2020 consumed almost entirely by the COVID19 pandemic, more than half of the US residents turned to video games to fill the time.’ GPUs are both used in computer gaming, in cameras as well as in other gaming consoles which indicates their overall supernormal demand that possibly mismatched its supply. To further mismatch this high demand with low supply, according to Pressman (2020) companies sent their employees home to prevent the spread of the virus which, on the other hand, halted production and consequent supply of products such as GPUs. With borders being closed, Pressman (2020) outlines that it also became difficult to ship products across the globe. Such forms the fundamental contributions the COVID 19 effects have had in the GPU shortages.
Methodological Issues
To further establish the discourse of this study, the study embarked on an open-ended survey (appendix 1). Such a survey was deemed to be a suitable research methodology due to its ability to obtain broad data (Szolnoki & Hoffmann, 2013) of what possibly could be the cause of GPU shortage, particularly in the United States. Secondly, in a narrower context, the survey sought to understand whether political and the COVID 19 effects have in any way played a role in GPU shortage. Finally, the survey also looked into how GPU shortage is affecting gamers and the rest of the world.
To ensure an extensive survey, this study combined online surveys, paper surveys, and telephone surveys (Szolnoki & Hoffmann, 2013). To achieve greater accuracy and fair representation across stakeholders in the gaming sector, the study utilized stratified sampling which included subgroups four subgroups-users of gaming products (gamers), people with gaming studios, vendors and retailers of gaming products, and manufacturers of GPUs. In the last three categories, two respondents were picked from each for paper surveys and telephone surveys while the online survey was capped at 20 respondents irrespective of the category. This cross-sectional approach to the survey was important in expediting the survey.
For data analysis, the study utilized a qualitative method of data analysis specifically the deductive approach, which is suitable when a study is assumed to have a fair idea of what to expect from respondents (Pandey, 2019). Such being the case, the total sample population was composed of 20 respondents. In a very simple survey, the respondents were supposed to indicate their position in gaming, that is, whether they are users, retailers, and so on, and proceed to outline reasons they think are causing GPU shortage, whether the politics and COVID have a role in it and how they have been affected by the shortage.
Discussion
The results of the qualitative analysis indicated that 12 percent of the respondents believed that government restrictions on imports reduced the supply of GPUs, 43 percent believed the high demand created by the corona pandemic was a key factor in the shortage, 5 percent believed both factors played a key role in GPU shortage, 10 percent believed the manufacturers were constrained to meet the growing gaming demand, while the remaining 30 percent had no idea of the cause. 30 percent, majorly composed of retailers and people with gaming studios felt frustrated as they were out of stock for products in high demand, and also the upgrading option was limited, respectively.
From this study, it was explicit that while many respondents had an idea of the possible causes of GPU shortage, a significant number lacked the idea of what the causes could be. A certain percentage also recognized the combination of the adverse effects of politics and the COVID 19 pandemic on GPU shortage, majorly noting higher restrictions on imports advocated by the former regime as well as low supply which was caused by a drop-in economic activity when the pandemic hit. Another factor was noted by most respondents who pointed on the effects of the pandemic on GPU shortage was the increase in demand for such products to keep occupied during the lockdown. Those who expressed frustrations cited paper launches by GPU manufacturers such as Nvidia and AMD. While these opinions were very clear in the statement, the opinion suggesting that GPU shortage could have been as a result of manufacturer constraints failed to come out clearly for consideration.
Conclusion
The discourse that GPU shortage was a result of adverse effects of politics and the COVID 19 on the GPU supply is supported by three key three studies on one hand and, on the other hand, substantially supported by a primary survey on the issue. Such affirm that politics, particularly restrictive taxes on imports, have largely contributed to GPU shortage. Moreover, as it has been argued, the effects of the pandemic on the shortage are two-dimensional. On one dimension, they caused supernormal demand for GPUs. On the other dimension, they limited the supply by slowing down the economic activity which is critical in maintaining sufficient supply. Besides, the argument that gamers’ frustrations were mainly as a result of paper launch by manufacturers, which meant they (manufacturers) were unable to meet the present demand despite promising to make the products available to capacity, is largely supported by the primary research, which to a great extent underpins its validity.
References
Boston Limited. (2021). What is GPU computing? https://www.boston.co.uk/info/nvidia-kepler/what-is-gpu-computing.aspx
Intel. (2021). What is a GPU? Graphics processing units defined. https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/docs/processors/what-is-a-gpu.html
Pandey, J. (2019). Deductive approach to content analysis. In Qualitative techniques for workplace data analysis (145-169). IGI Global. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/325819417_Deductive_Approach_to_Content_Analysis
Pressman, A. (2021). The great chip shortage of 2021: Why carmakers and computer makers are scrambling. https://fortune.com/2021/02/15/chip-shortage-2021-cars-computers-auto-industry-technology-covid-19/
Szolnoki, G., & Hoffmann, D. (2013). Online, face-to-face and telephone surveys—Comparing different sampling methods in wine consumer research. Wine Economics and Policy, 2(2), 57-66. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2212977413000331
The Verge. (2021). A Trump tax means you’ll pay even more for Nvidia and AMD’s impossible-to-find graphics cards. https://www.theverge.com/2021/1/7/22217206/nvidia-amd-gpu-trump-tax-china-tariff-exemption-expire
Appendix 1: Survey Instrument
This survey is designed to investigate the causes of GPU shortage as well as how this shortage has affected gamers. The survey is purely for academic purposes. Kindly be free to provide your opinions regarding the two issues to the best of your knowledge.
Respondent’s details:
City…………………………………………
Interest in the gaming industry (tick the category that best fits you)
Manufacturer………..
Dealer……………….
Retailer………………
Gaming studio………
End user……………..
Critically respond to these questions to the best of your knowledge
- What factors do you think have contributed to GPU shortage? (Elaborate if possible)
- How has GPU shortage affected you as a stakeholder in the gaming sector? (elaborate if possible)
