We’ve been patiently waiting for AMD’s next generation Zen CPU as well as the introduction of Intel’s Kaby Lake-based CPUs, though it’s now appearing that there might be some supply issues deep in the supply chain that could affect availability of these CPUs. They may be somewhat delayed as a result.
Inventory problems have delayed Kaby Lake and Zen until CES 2017
A report from Digitimes is saying that both Intel and AMD have had to delay their respective CPU launches until January of 2017, likely at CES, due to some constraining of the supply chain upstream.
Originally, Kaby Lake was going to launch at the end of Q3 2016, though the process shrink proved to be slightly more obstinate than was originally planned for. That combined with material issues are responsible for this delay. Zen, too, was supposed to be coming around Q4 2016, though that has changed as well. Those launches are both postponed until they can correct these issues.
Launching a significant CPU generation without having the stock to allow it to proliferate in the market could very well have quite the negative effect on the public image, stock and other aspects of either company. It’s better to wait to fully launch when it can actually be available, as opposed to mirroring the launches of Pascal and Fiji, whose supply chain issues have had a negative effect on consumer confidence.
At the moment most retailers are aggressively reducing their inventory of Skylake, Haswell and Broadwell in order to make room for the next-generation. This may cause further issues in the market if they clear their inventory and continue to not restock in anticipation. This upsets that balance, but could also make for better deals on “last generation” CPUs leading up to CES 2017.