ExtremeTech Why We Can’t Build Our Way Out of the Semiconductor Shortage By Joel Hruska on May 11, 2021 at 7:29 am This site may earn affiliate commissions from the links on this page. Terms of use. If you date the semiconductor shortage to Nvidia’s Ampere launch last year — and for enthusiasts, at least, I think that’s when the hammer really dropped — we’ve now been stuck in a semiconductor shortage for eight months. The pandemic-related shortage came on the heels of an Intel-specific CPU shortage in 2018 and into 2019, and several GPU shortages have stretched back to 2016. Why haven’t we fixed this problem already?