According to one of Nvidia's component suppliers, the inventory disaster for the Nvidia RTX 30 series will probably last until 2022.

Taiwanese chipmaker TSMC, which also produces silicon for AMD and Intel, warned that it may not be able to meet demand until 2023, let alone this year or 2022, although it is taking steps to increase production capacity. So those who have been looking for a place to buy the RTX 3080 or Nvidia's other RTX 30 series cards may have to be prepared for an even longer wait.

According to TechRadar, TSMC CEO C.C. Wei told investors, "We see demand remaining high, and we hope to be able to provide more production capacity to support our customers in 2023. By that time, we will begin to see some relief from the tightness in the supply chain."

"We have acquired land and equipment and have begun construction on our new facility. We are hiring thousands of employees and expanding our production capacity at several locations."

Wei's comments come just days after Nvidia warned on its own investor conference call that RTX 30 series stock prices would remain low for "most of the year." In other words, TSMC is delivering worse news than before: in 2022, and possibly even 2023, it may remain difficult to buy the latest graphics cards at reputable retailers.

Even though the RTX 30 series was only released late last year, this timeframe brings the possibility that the chip shortage will affect Nvida's next-generation GPUs as well. New GeForce series are typically released every two years. It would be very unfortunate if this inventory disaster spoiled the RTX 30 series for its entire shelf life.

Meanwhile, Nvidia is looking for ways to shift demand away from the RTX 30 series. Our sister site Tom's Hardware reported that the company is making a second attempt to introduce an Ethereum mining limiter on the GeForce RTX 3060. The first attempt was an embarrassing failure, as Nvidia's own beta driver rendered the limiter ineffective.