NVIDIA, Samsung Strengthen Strategic Chip Fabrication Partnership in Deal

[Raevenlord]

It seems NVIDIA and Samsung's partnership in bringing to life the green company's semiconductor designs isn't about to end anytime soon. Semiconductor analysts and insiders have said that NVIDIA and Samsung etched a new manufacturing deal on December 17th that still relates to the company's in-high-demand RTX-30 series graphics cards, which should see Samsung increase output - particularly at its Hwaseong plant - to sate the seemingly unquenchable demand from consumers and scalpers alike. The deal, which is roughly valued at "hundreds of billions won" will see Samsung double down on its 8 nm output for NVIDIA's latest gaming chips. This seems to put to rest speculation on an RTX 30-series redesign for TSMC's allegedly better 7 nm process - and according to the industry insiders, NVIDIA looked to Samsung specifically because of the need for "quick delivery of the chips".

This instills new life into Samsung's contract-based foundry business; according to market researcher TrendForce, Samsung's foundry business is expected to post a record $14.05 billion in sales this year, up 17.9% from 2019, as the company expands its client base not only through this and the previous NVIDIA deal, to Qualcomm Technologies Inc., Google, IBM, Cisco and China's Baidu. Samsung is accelerating its investment into EUV lithography in sub-7 nm processes so as to poach more customers and market share from industry behemoth and poster boy TSMC, spending 10 trillion won ($8.6 billion) to both improve technology and increase output on its foundries.



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[mouacyk]

Oh well, suppose I'll live if 3080TI arrives on 8nm.

 

[Vya Domus]

So basically nothing new, of course they'd continue to sell 3000 series on Samsung's node, porting a design to a new node is a ridiculously costly endeavour which is probably not worth it at the moment no matter how sub par Samsung is.

Honesty those rumors about them jumping to TSMC in the middle of a generation where ludicrous to begin with, the investment is simply not worth it. I bet those leaks were fabricated with the intention of jacking the stock up.

 

[Fluffmeister]

Makes perfect sense really, TSMC just got more expensive and joining the long queue of TSMC customers isn't going to change anything considering AMD's 6800 series cards are still MIA. Keep your wafers for the A100 which bring in the big bucks and hunker down with the only other option in town.

 

[renz496]

IMO to refresh all the RTX30 series into TSMC 7nm never a thing. all i heard before nvidia is limiting the first batch order and then will order more wafer later. this "second" order is most likely that. even if nvidia are going to use TSMC 7nm it is most likely reserved to make chip faster than fully enabled GA102.

 

[mouacyk]

IMO to refresh all the RTX30 series into TSMC 7nm never a thing. all i heard before nvidia is limiting the first batch order and then will order more wafer later. this "second" order is most likely that. even if nvidia are going to use TSMC 7nm it is most likely reserved to make chip faster than fully enabled GA102.

One can dream right? RTX 3080TI running at 2700MHz. Ooooh AMD will never catch RT with that.

 

[evernessince]

Better for the market this way. Everyone using TSMC is bad for longer term competition in the foundry market.

 

[Vya Domus]

Everyone using TSMC is bad for longer term competition in the foundry market.

Everyone using TSMC is bad for the number of products available to customers. There is nothing bad about using a better manufacturing process.

 

[evernessince]

Everyone using TSMC is bad for the number of products available to customers. There is nothing bad about using a better manufacturing process.

It's got nothing to do with the process but the company owning that process. The fab market needs to remain competitive.

 

[Vya Domus]

It's got nothing to do with the process but the company owning that process.

It has everything to do with the process, companies want to use the best process and right now that comes from TSMC.

The fab market needs to remain competitive.

That's none of our business, we don't buy wafers from TSMC. The fab market can remain competitive depending on what other foundries do and that's again none of our business. As a consumer I only care about the end product, how that was managed on the technological front is irrelevant to me.

Let me say this as an example, AMD became competitive back in 2017 with an inferior process technology. If they could do it, so can everyone else, all these rumors about companies such as Nvidia whining about TSMC's supremacy are quite pathetic.