Source: The Pragmatic Engineer
After years of commodity chip availability, demand from AI training and inference workloads is straining CPU supply chains again, forcing companies to compete for scarce compute resources similar to the 2021-2022 semiconductor crisis. This shortage differs from that pandemic-era logistics crunch: it reflects structural shifts in how tech companies allocate capital, moving engineering resources away from incremental improvements toward AI infrastructure. The result is real constraints for teams building non-AI products and smaller competitors who can't secure foundry allocation.