NVIDIA Now Using Samsung for Manufacturing their Chips

[qwertywarrior]

it has become a tradition in the semiconductor industry to make your chips at the company you're suing

 

 

Ah, legal documents...NVIDIA has disclosed in their latest 10-K filing that none other than Samsung is manufacturing some of the company’s chips. TSMC has been the source of GPUs for both AMD and NVIDIA for some time, but this filing (the full document is available from the SEC website) has a very interesting mention of the suppliers of their silicon under the “Manufacturing” section:

 

"We utilize industry-leading suppliers, such as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited and Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd, to produce our semiconductor wafers."

 

Back in December NVIDIA commented on its lawsuit against Samsung for alleged IP theft, which only makes this partnership seem more unlikely. However even Apple (which has their own famous legal history with Samsung, of course) has relied on Samsung for some of the production of their A-series SoCs, including the current crop of A8 chips.  Business is business, and Samsung Foundry has been a reliable source of silicon for multiple manufacturers - particularly during times when TSMC has struggled to meet demand at smaller process nodes.

 

Samsung's Current Semiconductor Offering

It is unclear at this point whether the wafers produced by Samsung Semiconductor are for NVIDIA’s mobile parts exclusively, or if any of the desktop GPUs were produced there rather than at TSMC. The partnership could also be attributed simply to scale, just as Apple has augmented A8 SoC supply with their rival’s fab while primarily relying on TSMC. It will be interesting to see just how pervasive the chips produced by Samsung are within the NVIDIA lineup, and what future products might be manufactured with their newest 14nm FinFET process technology.

 

  http://www.pcper.com/news/General-Tech/SEC-Filing-Reveals-NVIDIA-Now-Using-Samsung-Some-Manufacturing

[StareX]

KEWLLLLL

[not a pervert]

With Samsung somewhat supporting amd i don't think so that nvidia lets Samsung manufacture their gpu chips,mobile soc's are fine. 

I have a inner feel Nvidia may turn to intel someday to manufacture their chips.

[XTankSlayerX]

Woah...

This was unexpectedly expected.

[brownninja97]

but i thought they were sueing eachother. damn tsundere companies.

[That Norwegian Guy]

but i thought they were sueing eachother. damn tsundere companies.

 

"I-I'l l-let you manufacture m-my chips, so b-be grateful! Baka!"

[NeatSquidYT]

socs

http://linustechtips.com/main/topic/171004-why-not/

[patrickjp93]

With Samsung somewhat supporting amd i don't think so that nvidia lets Samsung manufacture their gpu chips,mobile soc's are fine.

I have a inner feel Nvidia may turn to intel someday to manufacture their chips.

Intel would allow that only under 1 of two conditions: unfettered IP licensing of all of Nvidia's GPU tech to make up for the Larrabee betrayal (NVIDIA yanked the geometry processing and other techs due to Larrabee's strong showing), or bulk of the profits goto Intel.