Thursday, August 29th 2024
NVIDIA Resolves "Blackwell" Yield Issues with New Photomask
During its Q2 2024 earnings call, NVIDIA confirmed that its upcoming Blackwell-based products are facing low-yield challenges. However, the company announced that it has implemented design changes to improve the production yields of its B100 and B200 processors. Despite these setbacks, NVIDIA remains optimistic about its production timeline. The tech giant plans to commence the production ramp of Blackwell GPUs in Q4 2024, with expected shipments worth several billion dollars by the end of the year. In an official statement, NVIDIA explained, "We executed a change to the Blackwell GPU mask to improve production yield." The company also reaffirmed that it had successfully sampled Blackwell GPUs with customers in the second quarter.
However, NVIDIA acknowledged that meeting demand required producing "low-yielding Blackwell material," which impacted its gross margins. During an earnings call, NVIDIA's CEO Jensen Huang assured investors that the supply of B100 and B200 GPUs will be there. He expressed confidence in the company's ability to mass-produce these chips starting in the fourth quarter. The Blackwell B100 and B200 GPUs use TSMC's CoWoS-L packaging technology and a complex design, which prompted rumors about the company facing yield issues with its designs. Reports suggest that initial challenges arose from mismatched thermal expansion coefficients among various components, leading to warping and system failures. However, now the company claims that the fix that solved these problems was a new GPU photomask, which bumped yields back to normal levels.
Source:
via Tom's Hardware
However, NVIDIA acknowledged that meeting demand required producing "low-yielding Blackwell material," which impacted its gross margins. During an earnings call, NVIDIA's CEO Jensen Huang assured investors that the supply of B100 and B200 GPUs will be there. He expressed confidence in the company's ability to mass-produce these chips starting in the fourth quarter. The Blackwell B100 and B200 GPUs use TSMC's CoWoS-L packaging technology and a complex design, which prompted rumors about the company facing yield issues with its designs. Reports suggest that initial challenges arose from mismatched thermal expansion coefficients among various components, leading to warping and system failures. However, now the company claims that the fix that solved these problems was a new GPU photomask, which bumped yields back to normal levels.
14 Comments on NVIDIA Resolves "Blackwell" Yield Issues with New Photomask
oh, ya. silly me, i forgot that Nvidia is king of Gross margins…
“impacted“ gross margins. btw AMD and Apple have GM’s of 50 percent… Nvidia has GM’s of 70%… so Gross! (in a ”back-in-the-day” Valley Girl accent)
It is all about how is the price, how good is your product and how you run the company.
Intel was above 60% as well for many years, until the recent ones, where it dropped below 40%.
AMD is deliberately lowering their margins to get people to buy their products.
Intel was a bit above 60% when they had a monopoly over the market that dropped about 1 1/2 years after Zen's launch when Intel finally realized AMD was a threat:
That pretty much tells you all you need to know about the state of the GPU market, Nvidia is pulling those kind of margins for two reasons: 1) It's essentially a monopoly in the GPU market that integrates vertically (at every level of software from the games to the APIs and even in related hardware like mice and keyboards) to expert maximum control. You can see even prior to AI taking off Nvidia's margins were slowly but steadily increasing since late 2011. 2) It's essentially a monopoly in the AI market employing all the same dirty tactics it honed over the years in the gaming space. Lock customers and devs in with software and use market leverage to force partners and customers to your will. Want to switch brands? Ops your allocation or orders are pulled and your company goes out of business.Actually Apple topped out at 48% a bit after the original iPhone's launch.
It just goes to show you how bonkers some of these margins are if they are overshadowing a company known for it's markup to such a degree.
When releasing a new gen there are always problems... this is why there is a ramp. Shit doesn't just start at 100% efficiency lol.
AMD
And why not, Apple: