Samsung Foundry Taking Extreme Steps To Win 3nm Orders From NVIDIA For Next-Gen GPUs

Samsung has reportedly taken extreme steps to ensure that it can win orders for its 3nm node technology from NVIDIA.

The Korean news outlet, FN News, reports that Samsung has made its top priority for this year to receive chip orders from NVIDIA. NVIDIA has long been using TSMC's advanced process nodes to develop its GPUs, whether they be for the consumer or the data center segment. The most recent families which include Ada Lovelace, Hopper, and Blackwell, are all made using TSMC's 5nm (4N) processes.

Samsung Foundry is aware of TSMC's leading position and wants to win back NVIDIA as a major customer. For this purpose, they are doing all they can to ensure that their 3nm process node that makes use of GAA (Gate-All-Around) architecture is up to the task and meets the requirements of the green giant.

For this purpose, Samsung has imposed an internal strategy codenamed "Nemo" which refers to NVIDIA and each department is making an effort to ensure that they can receive orders from the chipmaker. It should be remembered that NVIDIA last leveraged Samsung's Foundry (8nm) for its GeForce RTX 30 "Ampere" GPUs which were designed for the gaming (client) segment. The follow-up to Ampere, Ada Lovelace "GeForce RTX 40" switched over to TSMC (5nm).

So far, Samsung Foundry eyes the mass production of the 3nm GAA process in the first half of 2024. The GAA technology will eliminate some of the major bottlenecks associated with the old FinFET processes but it remains to be seen if the process will be enough to win NVIDIA over.

The company was recently reported to have failed the HBM3E memory qualifaction procedure from NVIDIA which could cause a major setback however Samsung is making sure that it can refine its HBM memory and is already planning the development of its next-gen HBM4 architecture which is expected to debut between 2025-2026.

It will be interesting to see if NVIDIA chooses to go back to Samsung for its future chip endeavors. We will likely see some semi-custom products before a full-on shift to Samsung. Given the demand for NVIDIA's GPUs, the chipmaker is likely to dual-source its chips from every semiconductor fab that it can get its hands on similar to how it dual-sourced HBM and packaging materials in the past.

News Source: @Revegnus1