According to a report from Korea, NVIDIA has signed a contract with Samsung for a second attempt to make its GeForce GPUs. Jennsen originally tapped Samsung’s 8nm node (although it was technically very slightly inferior to TSMC) for envisioning the massive supply bottleneck that TSMC was turning into. While his reasoning was correct, the gamble doesn’t seem to pay off as Samsung’s 8nm process suffered from low yields and a consequent lack of supply. Interestingly, there were reports about a month ago that Jensen had decided to go back to TSMC for its SUPER lineup (or whatever NVIDIA calls it), but if this Korean story is true, the second contract will also go to Samsung.
Samsung gets another billions-worth of contract to make Jensen’s NVIDIA GPUs – likely the RTX 30 SUPER series
Before we proceed, keep in mind that as of now this is just one source and may be wrong. Although the report is very confident that this contract has been awarded to Samsung, some salt is good for a healthy digestive system. Back to the story, the report claims the contract was confirmed on December 17 (yesterday, depending on where you are) and that although the exact value is unknown, it is worth ‘100s of billion won’ (100s of billion won comes down to 91 million USD approximately). Samsung will reportedly make the chips at its Hwaseong factory.
NVIDIA’s CEO Jensen has reportedly signed a second contract with Samsung for the production of its GPUs.
If true, this would free up a lot of space at TSMC in the future as NVIDIA’s GPUs become one less thing for them to produce – but more importantly – it will result in NVIDIA having an exceptional supply advantage as Samsung in it succeeds their Problems with 8nm yield. As NVIDIA would have very clearly made an informed decision, this bodes well for the industry as it seems they are confident in Samsung’s ability to determine the yield (* cough * I’m looking at you Intel * cough * ). The report further states that Samsung wants to narrow the gap between TSMC in the coming years.
The main lithography technology that matters in nodes below 10nm (or 14nm if you’re using Intel standards) is something like EUV. EUV lithography (or extreme ultraviolet) allows the foundry to significantly reduce the difficulty of fabricating a particular node as the wavelength used in EUV is significantly lower than standard lithographic scanners. While dual (or even triple / quad) patterns are required with standard wavelengths, you can achieve 8 nm with a single pattern on EUV. The company mentions that they will use EUV to create a 4nm process that narrows the gap between TSMC and Samsung. The company is spending $ 8.6 billion USD to develop chip foundry technology and has no plans to exit the groundbreaking race any time soon.
This is great news for pretty much everyone (well, except TSMC), as a lower load on TSMC means more AMD products for everyone and also means exponentially more supply for NVIDIA by the end of 2021. It’s unclear whether Samsung plans to address their yield issues or will simply subsidize the bad returns for the company. In any case, it was essential for the company to retain NVIDIA as a customer given the strength of the company (and their demand for a leading process) and this is a situation where everyone seems to have won. While there’s no word on which GPUs will be manufactured in this second contract, we can assume the RTX 30 SUPER series will be part of this.