Nvidia and TSMC might bring Blackwell production to the US, according to a Reuters report based on unnamed sources. Neither company went on the record, but if the move happens, it’s a win for the TSMC fab in Arizona, which would handle the job. It would also be a win for the US government in its attempt to build up the country’s chip fabrication capabilities. The twist is that those chips would then need to go to Taiwan for packaging.
Right now, Taiwan handles chip packaging at home. The technology, known as Chip on Wafer on Substrate (CoWoS), is part of TSMC’s 3DFabric. The Arizona fabrication facilities have been under construction for some time and have received billions of dollars in funding from TSMC and the US over the years. In fact, the US Department of Commerce recently awarded the Arizona facility $6.6 billion. The US government promised tens of billions of dollars to several chip giants, including Intel, via the CHIPS Act in 2022. The Act provided some of the money through tax credits, but direct grants were also planned. As time dragged on, chipmakers became increasingly frustrated with the delays in grant money.
Despite TMSC’s progress in constructing its three Arizona fabs, it doesn’t have the capabilities needed for packaging Blackwell chips on US soil. Any processors produced here will need to go to Taiwan. That apparently hasn’t stopped the two companies from discussing the project.
Credit: Nvidia
Packaging has long been a hot topic for TSMC and Nvidia. Demand for Blackwell is enormous and as TSMC scaled production, it also invested heavily in improving its packaging capabilities. But with AI driving customers to Nvidia’s latest chips, demand is only building. The Arizona fab should begin major production using the 4nm process in 2025, and 3nm production is expected to occur next.
As Wccftech points out, the Blackwell GPUs would likely be made on the 4nm process, as that’s what the Arizona fabs will be capable of handling for Nvidia in 2025. But taking all this with the usual grain of salt is important. So far, neither company has officially confirmed any information about the Nvidia-TSMC talks regarding the Arizona fabs. If it turns out that Arizona starts producing Blackwell GPUs next year and ships them to Taiwan for packaging, it will be interesting to see whether that leads to building packaging capabilities in the US.
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source: https://www.extremetech.com/computing/nvidia-tsmc-appear-to-consider-blackwell-production-in-arizona
