TSMC reportedly in talks with NVIDIA to manufacture AI chip 'Blackwell,' with production to begin as early as 2025 at new US factory
By
Reuters reported that TSMC, a major foundry, is in talks to manufacture Nvidia's AI chips at a new factory in Arizona, USA.
Exclusive: TSMC in talks with Nvidia for AI chip production in Arizona, sources say | Reuters
https://www.reuters.com/technology/tsmc-talks-with-nvidia-ai-chip-production-arizona-sources-say-2024-12-05/
TSMC is reportedly in talks with Nvidia to make Blackwell GPUs in Arizona — Blackwell silicon needs to be shipped back to Taiwan for assembly | Tom's Hardware
https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/gpus/tsmc-is-reportedly-in-talks-with-nvidia-to-make-blackwell-gpus-in-arizona-blackwell-silicon-needs-to-be-shipped-back-to-taiwan-for-assembly
TSMC is in talks with Nvidia about manufacturing Blackwell at its new Fab 21 facility near Phoenix, Arizona, and is already preparing to start production in early 2025, according to three people familiar with the matter who spoke to Reuters.
Blackwell, which NVIDIA announced in March 2024, has been produced at TSMC's Taiwanese factory. NVIDIA says that the chip, which can perform tasks such as chatbot responses 30 times faster, is in high demand from customers related to generative AI and high-speed computing.
NVIDIA announces GPU architecture 'Blackwell' and new GPU 'B200' to realize AI models with trillions of parameters - GIGAZINE
Regarding manufacturing Blackwell in the United States, technology site Tom's Hardware said, 'Blackwell is manufactured on TSMC's custom 4NP process technology, which is equivalent to the 4nm class, and Fab 21 is designed to manufacture chips at 4nm and 5nm class production nodes, so it will be relatively easy to move Blackwell's manufacturing from Taiwan's factories to Fab 21.'
The people declined to be identified as the talks are confidential. TSMC and Nvidia did not respond to requests for comment from Reuters.
If the negotiations between TSMC and NVIDIA go through, Fab 21, which is scheduled to begin operations in 2025, will have a new customer.
Two of the three people involved are customers of Apple and AMD's Fab 21. Apple and AMD also did not respond to requests for comment.
by Fritzchens Fritz
According to the two people, Fab 21 does not have chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) capabilities, a packaging technology that is essential for manufacturing high-performance chips. Fab 21 can produce Blackwell's front-end, but all of TSMC's CoWoS production capacity is in Taiwan, so the chips would have to be shipped back to Taiwan for packaging to be completed.
Although this will involve shipping costs from the United States to Taiwan, Tom's Hardware pointed out that 'since most of the AI servers are originally assembled in Taiwan, this will not be a major logistical problem.'
Related Posts:
in Hardware, Posted by log1l_ks