AI data center boom is leaving consumer electronics short of chips − even though they don’t use the same kinds

The boom in data center construction is taking up much of the supply of high-tech components, especially processor and memory chips. This demand is squeezing consumer device makers, which are having trouble acquiring enough chips. This is happening even though data center servers and smartphones use different types of chips. The key distinction between consumer electronics and data centers is what they need chips to be optimized for. Smartphones and PCs require low power use, thermal efficiency and tight integration. Data centers that run AI systems such as large language models, or LLMs, require maximum compute power, memory bandwidth and storage throughput. To meet these needs, consumer devices tend to rely on systems-on-a-chip – chips that combine processing and storage – with dynamic random access memory, or DRAM, and NAND, a type of nonvolatile memory. In contrast, AI servers rely on graphics processing units, or GPUs, or other accelerator processors combined with high-bandwidth memory chips. I study global supply chains and how businesses respond to market constraints within these supply chains. The reason for the consumer electronics supply crunch has to do with the nature of the chip market: its concentration and high costs and how it responds to boom-and-bust