NVIDIA brings Intel on board – for a threesome with Samsung?

At the UBS Global Technology Conference, Colette Kress, CFO of NVIDIA, was asked if they would consider working with Intel as a foundry partner for the production of their next generation of chips. She was very positive about this possibility. While the majority of GPUs for AI/HPC and gaming chips in data centers are currently manufactured by TSMC, it was Samsung that produced NVIDIA’s gaming GPUs just one generation ago.

Samsung factories were responsible for the development of Ampere, NVIDIA’s GPU family as we find in the GeForce RTX 30 “gaming” graphics cards. As mentioned in previous reports, Samsung is looking to play a larger role in supporting NVIDIA’s data center sales in the coming years and has already established itself as a close partner of Team Green.

TSMC is expected to continue its important partnership with NVIDIA to produce the Hopper H200 and Blackwell B100 GPUs and maintain its market share in AI. Should additional orders be required, Samsung will also be available. NVIDIA is also looking to build a diverse network of foundry partners and is open to working with a third party partner (in relation to Intel). Here’s what NVIDIA had to say about it:

I think there are a lot of great foundry partners. TSMC has been a great one. As you know, we also use Samsung today. Would we love a third one? Sure. We would love a third one. And that takes a work of what are they interested in terms of the services. Keep in mind, there are other ones that may come to the U.S. TSMC in the U.S. may be an option for us as well. Not necessarily different, but again in terms of the different region. Nothing that stops us from potentially adding another foundry.

Colette Kress (NVIDIA CFO) at UBS Global Technology Conference

Samsung Foundry has improved their offerings and has been able to get Team Green to place more orders with them again. This is not only because Samsung has now significantly optimized their processes, but also because they have worked closely with Team Green over the last two years to become (or remain) a reliable supplier. Samsung has an advantage over other foundry competitors as they have extensive equipment for the semiconductor, memory and packaging phases. This makes Samsung a “hybrid partner” for NVIDIA and could give the company itself a boost if they can offer competitive pricing and lead times.

According to industry sources, Intel will also be named as a foundry partner. Even the CEO of NVIDIA, Jensen Huang, has hinted that they could rely on Intel’s foundries for their chips in the future. Such a deal would definitely be a big success for Intel, as the company is keen to attract more IFS partners in the future.

It would also be beneficial for NVIDIA and other chip giants like AMD and even Intel to have US-based foundry partners, as they currently rely on TSMC to produce certain IPs in their chips. However, NVIDIA’s CEO believes that it will be decades before the US is independent in the supply chain. The first big step in that direction would be to locate TSMC and other large factories in the US.

Source: Sedaily