Nvidia’s demand for superior packaging from TSMC stays robust although the type of expertise it wants is altering, the U.S. AI chip big’s CEO Jensen Huang stated on Thursday, after he was requested whether or not the corporate was reducing orders.
Nvidia’s most superior synthetic intelligence (AI) chip, Blackwell, consists of a number of chips glued collectively utilizing a fancy chip on wafer on substrate (CoWoS) superior packaging expertise provided by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC), Nvidia’s important contract chipmaker.
“As we transfer into Blackwell, we’ll use largely CoWoS-L. In fact, we’re nonetheless manufacturing Hopper, and Hopper will use CowoS-S. We may even transition the CoWoS-S capability to CoWos-L,” Huang stated on the sidelines of an occasion by chip provider Siliconware Precision Industries in Taiwan’s central Taichung metropolis.
“So it isn’t about lowering capability. It is really growing capability into CoWoS-L.” Hopper refers to Nvidia’s GPU structure platform earlier than it introduced Blackwell in March 2024. Nvidia has up to now relied primarily on one sort of CoWoS expertise, CoWoS-S, to mix its AI chips.
TF Worldwide Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo on Wednesday stated Nvidia was shifting its focus to a more recent sort of expertise, CoWoS-L, and that suppliers could be affected.
As well as, Taiwan media reported that Nvidia was reducing CoWoS-S orders from TSMC in a possible hit to the Taiwanese chip foundry’s income. Nvidia has been promoting its Blackwell chips as rapidly as TSMC could make them however packaging has remained a bottleneck as a consequence of capability constraints.
Nonetheless, Huang stated that the quantity of superior packaging capability was “most likely 4 occasions” the quantity accessible lower than two years in the past. He declined to reply questions on the brand new U.S. export restrictions that restrict AI chip exports to most nations aside from a choose group of shut U.S. allies together with Taiwan.
Huang can also be anticipated to attend Nvidia Taiwan’s annual new yr occasion this week in Taipei.
Huang, who was born within the southern metropolis of Tainan, Taiwan’s historic capital, earlier than emigrating to the US on the age of 9, is vastly standard in Taiwan along with his each transfer breathlessly adopted by native media.
