[News] NVIDIA Reportedly in Talks with TSMC to Produce Blackwell in Arizona, While Packaging Handled in Taiwan

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Another addition to TSMC’s prestigious client roster in its Arizona facility. According to Reuters, following tech giants Apple and AMD, NVIDIA is reportedly in talks with TSMC to manufacture its Blackwell AI chips at the new Arizona fab.

Preparations for production are already underway, as TSMC’s Arizona fab is scheduled to start mass production in early 2025, according to the sources cited by the report.

NVIDIA and TSMC declined to comment, as per Reuters.

Blackwell Packaging May Still Be Handled in Taiwan

Reuters notes that NVIDIA’s Blackwell chips, introduced in March, have been exclusively produced by TSMC in Taiwan. According to the report, Blackwell, highly sought after by customers in generative AI and accelerated computing, is touted to deliver 30 times the performance for tasks such as powering chatbot responses.

However, it is worth noting that though TSMC plans to handle the front-end production of NVIDIA’s Blackwell in Arizona, the chips will need to be sent back to Taiwan for packaging, the Reuters report notes, for the Arizona plant lacks the chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) capability required for Blackwell.

Currently, all of TSMC’s CoWoS capacity is based in Taiwan, the report adds.

Notably, TSMC has teamed up with packaging and testing provider Amkor to offer advanced packaging and testing services for the Arizona plant, according to the foundry giant’s press release.

Industry experts cited by another Commercial Times report indicate that with CoWoS capacities added, the collaboration might be the missing puzzle needed for the U.S. to establish a domestic AI supply chain, which may take place as early as the second half of next year.

Will AWS Be Next?

With the Arizona plant nearing mass production, TSMC is actively courting more U.S. clients. According to Commercial Times. AWS plans to use TSMC’s 3nm process to produce its latest AI chip, Trainium3. The cloud giant is reportedly interested in booking the capacity of TSMC’s second fab in the U.S., the report adds.

TSMC’s first Arizona fab is reportedly set to produce chips based on the 5nm family, including N4, N4P, and N4X nodes, according to Commercial Times.

The Commercial report suggests that TSMC’s customers include Apple, which plans to manufacture its A16 processors using N4P. AMD, on the other hand, is rumored to leverage TSMC’s 4nm on the production of its HPC chips, while NVIDIA reportedly plans to produce its B-series chips on the 4nm process as well, as per the report.

Read more

• [News] TSMC’s First Plant in Arizona Achieves Early Chip Production Yields Higher than Taiwan

(Photo credit: NVIDIA)