Nvidia can move Ampere manufacturing to TSMC in 2021

Nvidia’s graphics series “Ampere” with the associated graphics cards Geforce RTX 3000 series has got off to a shaky start in terms of access to store shelves, where the reason is spelled lack of working circuits. To the surprise of many, the company chose to take a step away from manufacturing at its long-term partner TSMC to instead hire Samsung, where the circuits are forged on its node of 8 nanometers.

Samsung’s manufacturing technology seems to have problems with that yields, the number of working circuits per silicon wafer, which now leads Nvidia to book production capacity at TSMC of 7 nanometers with production start in 2021 according to the Taiwanese industry magazine Digitimes. Such a maneuver would mean that TSMC during the year delivers circuits to AMD, Apple, Nvidia and Intel itself.

How expanded production of circuits in the “Ampere” family will affect Nvidia’s product strategy remains to be seen, but according to Guru3d, production at TSMC is not intended to replace production at Samsung, but is intended to supplement it. One possible scenario is that the capacity may be used exclusively for the production of graphics circuits for future volume products such as RTX 3050 and 3060.

Using TSMC production for updated versions of RTX 3080 and 3090 is also a possible alternative – possibly under the “Super” flag or with, for example, RTX 3080 in 20 GB screws.

Read more about the Nvidia Geforce RTX 3000 series: