Nvidia’s Ampere manufacturing is split between TSMC and Samsung

In the summer of 2019, Nvidia confirmed that the company has chosen to let Samsung manufacture the graphics cards in the upcoming Ampere family, this on Samsung’s 7nm EUV technology. The information then indicated that Samsung had succeeded in stealing a large customer from rival TSMC, but a new report from the industry publication Digitimes states that this is only partially true (via Retiredengineer).

According to Digitime’s report, Nvidia’s plan was originally to reduce its dependence on TSMC by moving production to Samsung. The company will then change its plans and want to return to TSMC, but then encountered problems when AMD’s manufacturing of both processors and graphics cards put its hands on a large part of TSMC’s capacity of 7 nanometers.

Worth noting, Nvidia previously underestimated the effect of AMD embracing TSMC, and made some errors in its own plans for migrating to advanced nodes. Moving to Samsung and wavering in its TSMC strategy, only to go back to TSMC later, Nvidia was unable to secure enough 7nm capacity, resulting in AMD grabbing the limelight, eroding Nvidia’s brand value, and increasing its own market share for GPUs

The report further states that Nvidia’s courtship of Samsung has also been part of a strategy to get the company to lower TSMC’s prices for 7nm technology, which is said to be significantly more expensive than Samsung’s. The information also indicates that Nvidia deliberately leaked the news of the shift to Samsung’s manufacturing to pressure TSMC on reduced prices.

Due to uncertainties surrounding Covid-19, Ampere which was originally scheduled for Q3’20 launch may experience slight delays. 3. Due to the high cost of advanced nodes, and the desire to have a second source for risk diversification, Nvidia may use the higher-cost, but better-yielding TSMC 7nm EUV process for its mid-to-high-end products, while part of the lower volume, mid-to-low end products will use Samsung’s aggressively priced 7nm EUV and 8nm processes

However, the strategy should not have achieved the desired result, and Nvidia is therefore said to have crawled to the cross and has placed a large order for Ampere manufacturing on TSMC’s 7nm EUV technology. Samsung is still in the picture, however, but is instead said to manufacture the middle and entry segment in Nvidia’s Ampere family of 7- and 8 nanometers. The report also concludes that AMD is rumored to be moving some manufacturing to Samsung, something analysts, however, see as unlikely due to AMD’s strong business ties to TSMC.

If the information turns out to be correct, it could mean a greater price difference between graphics cards in the Ampere family’s lower and upper segments, as lower costs for manufacturing at Samsung can be transferred to lower prices at the end customer. The step up to the high-performance Ampere cards could thus be larger than it is in Nvidia’s current graphics card in the Geforce RTX 2000 series.

Nvidia has previously indicated that the graphics cards in the Ampere family will be unveiled during the company’s digital event GTC 2020, which will be launched on 14 May at 15:00 Swedish time.

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