NVIDIA has reaffirmed that the ongoing GPU shortages are set to ease down in the second half of 2022, right before their next-gen GeForce RTX 40 series hits retail.
NVIDIA Reaffirms That Ongoing GPU Shortages Are Set To Ease in 2H 2022, Right Before Their Next-Gen GeForce RTX 40 Series Arrive
During the 24th Annual Needham Growth Conference, NVIDIA's CFO, Colette Kress, reaffirmed that the ongoing GPU crisis is going to get better in the second half of 2022. Colette also pointed out the huge demand for GeForce graphics cards and GPUs and expects it to outweigh their supply of existing chips.
So even throughout all of calendar 2021, we have seen strong demand for GeForce. And it continues to remain strong and stronger than our overall supply that we have. The holiday demand, for example, was quite strong, particularly in laptops. And we're still finishing out our quarter. But we'll look at the end of the quarter in terms of what we've seen in terms of channel levels. We had seen channel levels be quite lean, and we are working with our supply chain partners to increase the availability of supply. And we feel better about our supply situation as we move into the second half of the calendar year '22.
Some of the other record breaking things that we've seen is gaming demand is quite strong. We're seeing record concurrent users, for example, on Steam. 28 million concurrent users breaking a prior record quite easily. Also, we're seeing momentum build -- momentum building for creative and/or Metaverse like type of applications that are addressed with our Studio offerings, but also [indiscernible].
Now when we focus in terms of cryptocurrency, the contribution of cryptocurrency to our gaming revenue continues and will be difficult for us to quantify. We believe that our process on light hash rate cards for GeForce, also with our CMP product, has been an effective strategy to steer GeForce to the supply of other gamers. However, new crypto hash rate has stemmed and we're seeing several different sources of that. That can be our GeForce GPUs, it could be AMD GPUs, custom ASICs, and our CMP product, all of these are contributing. But again, it's just very difficult for us to quantify.
Not only NVIDIA's CEO, but Intel and AMD's CEOs have also previously hinted at the whole chip shortage situation easing down by the second half of 2022. But it isn't stated as to what will be attributed to the situation getting better. It looks like as the company moves into 2H 2022, they could start focusing on their next-gen GPU architecture, codenamed Ada Lovelace which is going to power their GeForce RTX 40 series GPUs. As such, moving over to a new generation may move off-set some load off the existing GPU lineup.
In a recent rumor, it was reported that NVIDIA has spent several billions of dollars to acquire large quantities of 5nm wafers from TSMC that will go on to power its next-gen GPU lineup. If this is true, then NVIDIA is really aiming to launch its latest products with a stronger supply than we had seen for GeForce RTX 30 series. Currently, there have also been reports that the entry-level GeForce RTX 3050 graphics card is bound to get a better supply than both the GeForce RTX 3060 and RTX 3060 Ti, combined. The new card launches on 27th January so it won't be long before we see if that holds any truth.
Consumers are really looking forward to things getting better in the 2nd half of 2022 and we also hope that the chip supply shortages get better so gamers and PC users have access to the latest GPUs and CPUs on time and at MSRP.
