Nvidia does not seem to like putting all its money on one card and splitting the orders for its next-generation GPUs based on Ampere and Hopper architecture between two manufacturers, TSMC and Samsung.
Nvidia Hopper would arrive in 2021 with a 5nm TSMC process
According to well-known sources, DigiTimes reported that TSMC will continue to be Nvidia’s main source for chips for upcoming GPUs.
In addition, Nvidia has increased TSMC’s 5nm production capacity to 5nm in 2021 for Hopper
The source said that Nvidia uses Samsung’s factories to produce low-end ampere products. In this way, Nvidia could effectively reduce the TSMC load and maximize the revenues of both manufacturers to avoid delays.
At the moment, low-end ampere products are speculated to take advantage of Samsung’s 7-nm EUV or 8-nm process nodes. Samsung appears to have made the transition to the new and improved 5nm EUV manufacturing process in the second quarter of this year. Their sources also indicated that Nvidia and Samsung are negotiating whether the latter can get a small share of Nvidia’s 5nm orders, but this is not fully resolved at this time.
For the time being, Nvidia will talk about ampere architecture at the GTC 2020 on 14 May. We will have to wait a bit longer to learn more about Hopper.