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A report from the Korea Times suggests Nvidia has been cosying up with Samsung, in the hopes of striking up a deal to make use of the Korean hardware firm’s GPU foundry. Nvidia has struggled recently with the shift to smaller manufacturing nodes, and has sat up and taken notice of Samsung’s swift switch to 14nm FinFET GPU manufacturing for its Samsung Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge Phones.
Nvidia’s usual manufacturing partner, TSMC, has been slow to come to terms with its 20nm node, let alone 16nm or 14nm fabrication This has meant Nvidia’s desktop Maxwell range was all fabbed on a 28nm process - the only models to jump to 20nm were in its Tegra X1 devices.
As of late Nvidia has been relying heavily on the output of Taiwanese chip giant TSMC, and the switch to Samsung will see a rapid boost in access to improved production yields of 14nm chips. The benefit of a quick jump to the 14nm process for Nvidia is the opportunity for swift refreshes of its current hardware range, complete with significantly improved performance and efficiency.
Those with one ear to the ground on legal battles will be aware Nvidia is already in the midst of a patent lawsuit with Samsung and Qualcomm, the results of which look to be swinging Nvidia’s way, according to Nvidia’s chief administrative office, David Shannon. Despite this, a source for Korea Times said "The Samsung-Nvidia deal means that there is no enemy and friend in businesses."
One area of suspicion with this report is the cost of the deal itself, which the Korea Times claims is just a few million dollars. This clearly wouldn’t be enough for full-scale manufacture of GPU chips, but it could be seen as Nvidia testing the waters.
Nvidia’s usual manufacturing partner, TSMC, has been slow to come to terms with its 20nm node, let alone 16nm or 14nm fabrication This has meant Nvidia’s desktop Maxwell range was all fabbed on a 28nm process - the only models to jump to 20nm were in its Tegra X1 devices.
As of late Nvidia has been relying heavily on the output of Taiwanese chip giant TSMC, and the switch to Samsung will see a rapid boost in access to improved production yields of 14nm chips. The benefit of a quick jump to the 14nm process for Nvidia is the opportunity for swift refreshes of its current hardware range, complete with significantly improved performance and efficiency.
Those with one ear to the ground on legal battles will be aware Nvidia is already in the midst of a patent lawsuit with Samsung and Qualcomm, the results of which look to be swinging Nvidia’s way, according to Nvidia’s chief administrative office, David Shannon. Despite this, a source for Korea Times said "The Samsung-Nvidia deal means that there is no enemy and friend in businesses."
One area of suspicion with this report is the cost of the deal itself, which the Korea Times claims is just a few million dollars. This clearly wouldn’t be enough for full-scale manufacture of GPU chips, but it could be seen as Nvidia testing the waters.
Do you think Nvidia will end up looking elsewhere than TSMC for its next-generation chip production?
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