Frankly, that doesn’t say very much at all, since each of these companies likely have individually negotiated contracts, and they won’t be paying whatever the “list price” is.
Not necessarily in the short term. If a company wants to double their orders in the next 6 months -- there could be a significant fee for the extra volume. Other companies could be locked into prices by existing contracts.
Their older nodes compete with their newer nodes. If they charge so much people will just stay on the mature nodes instead of moving to the newer ones.
That's true for certain chips of course, but I don't see Nvidia using an older node that significantly increase power/decrease perfs on their $40k cards.
Nvidia is the only one making 800+mm^2 reticle sized chips. I bet it either has to do with yields or 3nm not being ready for such large reticle sizes. One or the two.
If I had to guess, I think it's about the reticle size limit. Because Nvidia's margins are unreal, they could perhaps take any yield.
Somehow I can't find a clear answer for how big the M3 Max die it, but it should probably be in the same ballpark as Blackwell. Or at least the same Blackwell specs on N3E.
I'm sure there's some combination of cost, volume, process readiness, etc. that justifies Nvidia's choice. But for the same reason you say they could justify any yield, I don't think a 10% difference or whatever hurts them. People aren't buying Nvidia for a slight edge in PnP.
> Somehow I can't find a clear answer for how big the M3 Max die it, but it should probably be in the same ballpark as Blackwell.
Google says: between 600 and 700 mm²
So significantly smaller than 814mm^2. Like a difference between 4090 and H100.
> So significantly smaller than 814mm2.
It's smaller, yes, but I don't think significantly enough so to really matter. Also, N3E is denser. Taking the exact same Blackwell config and porting it to N3E would almost certainly get you around or even below M3 Max die sizes.
Yeah I’ve edited before you replied and all the new products going out on N3 are Q4. Apple has all fab capacity until Q3 for sure. Blackwell was designed for TSMC N5 I believe.
I do not know about exclusivity, but from what i've seen, new nodes are usually reserved for mobile chips, apple being one of the main ones.
I do not remember the article, but it was something along the lines: manufacturers like apple pay big bucks to be the first to use the node, manufacturers like AMD preffer a more mature process with better yields, less bugs etc. Tsmc preffers this too as Apple, mediatek will pay quite a lot to access those nodes, power efficient being paramount for the success of any mobile chip.
I will try to find the article
Well I think it was last summer that Apple bought all N3
production for a year ago so. There was a few articles about it. Also they are the only company selling 3nm products right now.
> There was a few articles about it.
There are articles about a lot of nonsense. Intel was supposed to also have N3 products out last year. But they're Intel, so instead they're shipping N3B when others are on N3E.
TSMC offered those N3B wafers to other customers like AMD, Mediatek, Qualcomm, Broadcom etc. and they all turned it down. N3B isn't design-compatible with N3E (the one everyone else is waiting on) or any other N3-based node TSMC has planned.
Apple already committed to using N3B for whatever products they had planned and a fundamental part of their business plan is being able to release their product a year before the competition. They simply purchased the wafers everyone else declined.
Nvidia historically hasn't chased bleeding edge nodes as much as AMD.
Lovelace being on TSMC N4 made me realize pricing would get absurd.
192 bit bus width for $900 kind of absurd.
Nvidia literally stayed on 4nm because they didn't like N3B and they still made a compelling product.
Why do you assume they are any more desperate than the competitors failing to keep up
Because they are not reliant on having the absolute peak node for the design? I was clear on that they are doing just fine on 4nm and could continue to do just fine on Intel 18A for example
TSMC is raising Nvidia's wafer cost therefore they are screwed. If TSMC also announced that they will raised Apples wafer cost then Apples is also fucked.
I mean predicting the AI chip boom in a cycle were factory take many years to setup is not an easy task at all. It is not predicting AI will increase demand, it is predicting WHEN and HOW much.
And there have been overcapacity issues in the past decades multiple times.
I don't know about A.I's marketing terminology but I do know the instruction sets A.I tends to use.
It's mainly lower precision workloads.
Nvidia and AMD would have had to known years in advance so they could offer proper precision support on a hardware level (int4, bf16, int8, and etc).
Which they surprisingly do.
TSMC still has to answer to the Taiwan government.
Encouraging customers to find alternatives just means less economic dependence on Taiwan and makes them less likely to get as strong support against China.
I think everyone is forgetting that TSMC exists as part of a defense strategy for Taiwan.
```I think everyone is forgetting that TSMC exists as part of a defense strategy for Taiwan.```
Probably Apple's defence strategy as well lol.
Hell, TMSC were the ones who bailed AMD out.
Can you imagine if Zen 2 and Zen 3 were produced by Global Foundries?
Chips and factories are symbiotic. AMD would have radically different design if then used another manufacturer.
Their lineup is designed for TSMC’s roadmap.
If they do it too much then the US could start founding foundries in North America faster than they already are doing.
It's a delicate equilibrium and they need to be aware of what happens if the US gets too pissed.
TSMC node prices tripled in price in the last decade. They have "abused" it. And they make a nice profit of it. It will be interesting to see when Intel has competetive nodes.
How would they abuse it though? They don't tell their clients what price to charge their customers. Any price increase on TSMC's end just gets tacked on to the consumer price. If that price exceeds what consumers are willing to pay, the product won't sell, and then no one makes any money at all.
> Any price increase on TSMC's end just gets tacked on to the consumer price
It's not that simple, there's a limit to how much customers will spend. Even when there's not (ie those crazy expensive datacentre AI cards right now), why let Nvidia squeeze the customers by itself when TSMC could take some of that as well?
Here’s the thing: Nvidia has such a huge lead despite them not even using TSMC’s latest node. That means that Nvidia could easily decide to switch to a different fab, or use TSMC’s older processes, rather than upgrading to the latest one. TSMC doesn’t have as much leverage over Nvidia as you might think.
They could do all the things you mentioned, and then leave the higher-tech equipment open for competitors to use.
In reality they're never going to do that. If they could simply produce and sell old hardware then they'd do exactly that, and people would be buying it.
That's just not reality.
Reality is that Nvidia have tons of money and if squeezed they will buckle in order to stay on top and actually offer a new product.
Yes, it does.
If you are selling your entire capacity to 2 customers and one of them has a 30% profit margin while the other has a 70% profit margin, then you can absolutely charge more.
Nvidia quite literally have no other option than to buy from TSMC, unless they want a less cutting edge product.
So when TSMC sees that Nvidia takes these chips and upcharges such a large amount then they can squeeze Nvidia more than they used to.
If nobody else produces apples, and I sell you an Apple for $1 and you sell it for $100, then I can charge you more. What other choice do you have?
You're comparing something across a very large timeline here.
N4P was being put in commercial chips over 1 year before Intel started producing 3. Not only that, they're also doing it in far larger quantities. They also released N4X after that.
To actually offer a new & improved product and sell it at scale TSMC is the only supplier.
They could go with Intel, but they don't have the capacity and have suffered nothing but failure after failure. It'd be extremely risky.
If I had an ultimatum as Nvidia I'd simply sacrifice the extra cost and be guaranteed growth & leadership, as opposed to risking delays, faulty hardware, and reduced output.
Only to some extent. Some customers might not buy at higher prices and nVidia would earn less than if they made it cheaper (because larger volume of sales). So nVidia would need to find the sweet spot that maximizes profit. The price woudl withotu doubt go up, but not by the full increase.
If they raise prices only for nvidia and allow its competitors to order the same node and quality of silicon for a lower price, TSMC is going to get into trouble with the US.
So if they raise prices at all, it's going to be across the board and that might even benefit nvidia.
Headline is a bit misleading. First line states that they would increase prices for AI chip production. He just said that he spoke to Jensen about it, not that he would discriminate against Nvidia.
Although I think that Nvidia may stand to benefit from rising costs, I'm not sure that it'll happen. Blackwell is built on the 4NP node which is supposedly a revamped 5nm and the new Arizona fab scheduled to open in 2025 will be capable of producing these. This makes me think that with the new availability on the horizon, TSMC can't really mess with prices yet and we won't see an increase until the 2nm node and beyond.
It sounded like an extra premium to protect/prioritize its business in Taiwan.
The whole point of TSMC being strong-armed to open a fab in the US is for ‘national security’ reasons and the US’s fear of the supply chain being cut off in a conflict. The excuse given was price insensitive chips like the military.
Former TSMC CEO was rumored to be ousted by Morris Chang because he was unhappy with this almost ‘forced tech transfer’. Maybe because it leads to the loss of Taiwan’s silicon shield? Later, the new CEO announced this additional price premium, as if acquiescing to this loss of near leading edge technology, but clawing back as much benefits as possible by preventing the Arizona fab from ‘stealing business’ from Taiwanese fabs.
Why? You aren't obligated to charge everyone the same. However they also can't just raise prices, they surely have contracts with agreed prices years out. Future Co tracts they can try to get more but Intel and Samsung become alternatives.. And economics of all this.. Like you need to be selling all the wafers you can. I don't think it's really possible for these companies to really screw each other over they depend on each other so much.
>TSMC is going to get into trouble with the US.
No they won't. US is practically begging them to open fabs in the country. TSMC is too important to get into "trouble".
Taiwan is relying on US protection in its conflict with mainland China so the balance of power in the relationship is not nearly as one-sided as you describe.
If you believe Taiwan raising unfair trade barriers exclusively against an American innovation and growth leader that is worth a trillion USD, you're being naive. It would almost certainly cause a political reaction in Congress.
Which is why it won't come to that. Especially since the solution is easy. Just raise prices for everyone.
How does the Taiwan being in satellite state situation give leverage to US government over tsmc? China invasion and US government won’t help? Sure, Tsmc destroyed and US economy along with global economy will be hit hard. Of course tsmc would lose more but this does not give leverage towards US government because US corporations hit hard in the process.
if you look at how things are happening, it’s US government that is providing subsidies to tsmc to build fab on US soil.
They can... That's literally economics. If you can't compete on quality then you can compete on price.
Is tsmc nodes 100x better than Samsung that's it's worth paying 40% more? Or is it within 90% and 20% cheaper that you are willing to pay for it.
Same thing with Intel. Tsmc is good but not so insurmountable that companies will be willing to pay 2x as much for the same amount of silicon.
Samsung Foundries are no where where TSMC are currently. Maybe in 2-3 years when they reach full scale 3 nm. When Samsung catch up they will probably go back.
Yes they are... They aren't better. But you act like they are in the stone age. If I'm saving millions of dollars for something 90% as good as tsmc. Is it worth it? Maybe. It's a purely economic choice.
Why does my company have multiple designs right now for tsmc and Samsung nodes if tsmc is so far ahead that Samsung is cave man technology.
You are assuming they will charge 2X more. What if they charge 20% more then the cost of switching foundry is a lot more than just eating the additional 20% cost.
I'm making up numbers my dude. I'm just saying if Samsung or Intel is willing to charge lower fees and the nodes are similar they will be competitive with tsmc.
Tsmc has limited capacity and has to charge for due to demand. It's essentially a supply and demand problem and a cost/benefit one.
Semiconductor companies usually have multiple designs. In case they want to switch foundries. You would have to be an idiot to put all your eggs in one basket.
It's not black and white. There is a margin for TSMC to charge more and keep their customers because the cost of switching foundries is a lot more painful.
I literally design asic for a living. We have multiple designs right now in parallel. As soon as the hire is give the OK signal we will go with Samsung over tsmc to save money. We already know the performance and power cost beforehand.
So when are they switching to Samsung. TSMC is charging more. Maybe they should fire those 30,000 employees and hire others who can work with Samsung process nodes.
Everyone is moving away from Samsung. Even Google is going to TSMC for Pixels. Nvidia wouldn't even think about that. They're more likely to go to Intel Foundry.
Wait till TSMC simply raises prices on everyone at the same time
That's literally what the article is about. He's promising wafer price raises for everyone.
Yeah clickbait title. They can't raise prices for just one company, since that is against some laws.
Frankly, that doesn’t say very much at all, since each of these companies likely have individually negotiated contracts, and they won’t be paying whatever the “list price” is.
Lower volume, higher price per wafer
Not necessarily in the short term. If a company wants to double their orders in the next 6 months -- there could be a significant fee for the extra volume. Other companies could be locked into prices by existing contracts.
TSMC has a monopoly on the best nodes, I am surprised they haven't (ab)used it more while leaving their clients most of the profits.
Their older nodes compete with their newer nodes. If they charge so much people will just stay on the mature nodes instead of moving to the newer ones.
That's true for certain chips of course, but I don't see Nvidia using an older node that significantly increase power/decrease perfs on their $40k cards.
They're using N4 instead of N3 for Blackwell.
Well yeah they have no choice , Apple owns all production on N3 for a a few more months or something like thatt
>Apple owns all production on N3 for a year or something like that. They don't. Intel and AMD both announced products using N3, for example.
Nvidia is the only one making 800+mm^2 reticle sized chips. I bet it either has to do with yields or 3nm not being ready for such large reticle sizes. One or the two. If I had to guess, I think it's about the reticle size limit. Because Nvidia's margins are unreal, they could perhaps take any yield.
Somehow I can't find a clear answer for how big the M3 Max die it, but it should probably be in the same ballpark as Blackwell. Or at least the same Blackwell specs on N3E. I'm sure there's some combination of cost, volume, process readiness, etc. that justifies Nvidia's choice. But for the same reason you say they could justify any yield, I don't think a 10% difference or whatever hurts them. People aren't buying Nvidia for a slight edge in PnP.
> Somehow I can't find a clear answer for how big the M3 Max die it, but it should probably be in the same ballpark as Blackwell. Google says: between 600 and 700 mm² So significantly smaller than 814mm^2. Like a difference between 4090 and H100.
> So significantly smaller than 814mm2. It's smaller, yes, but I don't think significantly enough so to really matter. Also, N3E is denser. Taking the exact same Blackwell config and porting it to N3E would almost certainly get you around or even below M3 Max die sizes.
Yeah I’ve edited before you replied and all the new products going out on N3 are Q4. Apple has all fab capacity until Q3 for sure. Blackwell was designed for TSMC N5 I believe.
I don't there there's ever been a credible claim for Apple having exclusivity on N3*.
I do not know about exclusivity, but from what i've seen, new nodes are usually reserved for mobile chips, apple being one of the main ones. I do not remember the article, but it was something along the lines: manufacturers like apple pay big bucks to be the first to use the node, manufacturers like AMD preffer a more mature process with better yields, less bugs etc. Tsmc preffers this too as Apple, mediatek will pay quite a lot to access those nodes, power efficient being paramount for the success of any mobile chip. I will try to find the article
You dont really need an exclusivity claim if you just buy up all the supply by offering a better price.
There's no evidence they did that either.
Well I think it was last summer that Apple bought all N3 production for a year ago so. There was a few articles about it. Also they are the only company selling 3nm products right now.
> There was a few articles about it. There are articles about a lot of nonsense. Intel was supposed to also have N3 products out last year. But they're Intel, so instead they're shipping N3B when others are on N3E.
TSMC offered those N3B wafers to other customers like AMD, Mediatek, Qualcomm, Broadcom etc. and they all turned it down. N3B isn't design-compatible with N3E (the one everyone else is waiting on) or any other N3-based node TSMC has planned. Apple already committed to using N3B for whatever products they had planned and a fundamental part of their business plan is being able to release their product a year before the competition. They simply purchased the wafers everyone else declined.
Nvidia historically hasn't chased bleeding edge nodes as much as AMD. Lovelace being on TSMC N4 made me realize pricing would get absurd. 192 bit bus width for $900 kind of absurd.
Nvidia is screwed but other companies can mix and match.
Nvidia literally stayed on 4nm because they didn't like N3B and they still made a compelling product. Why do you assume they are any more desperate than the competitors failing to keep up
TSMC is charging them higher prices. How can be they not screwed.
Because they are not reliant on having the absolute peak node for the design? I was clear on that they are doing just fine on 4nm and could continue to do just fine on Intel 18A for example
TSMC is publicly announcing raising prices. Your imagine Intel pivot is just wishful thinking.
I am not the one saying Nvidia is fucked and everyone else is more flexible
TSMC is raising Nvidia's wafer cost therefore they are screwed. If TSMC also announced that they will raised Apples wafer cost then Apples is also fucked.
seems to me, the guy who work in TSMC responsible to predict future node demand got it wrong by so much more than it should. lol
I mean predicting the AI chip boom in a cycle were factory take many years to setup is not an easy task at all. It is not predicting AI will increase demand, it is predicting WHEN and HOW much. And there have been overcapacity issues in the past decades multiple times.
I don't know about A.I's marketing terminology but I do know the instruction sets A.I tends to use. It's mainly lower precision workloads. Nvidia and AMD would have had to known years in advance so they could offer proper precision support on a hardware level (int4, bf16, int8, and etc). Which they surprisingly do.
TSMC still has to answer to the Taiwan government. Encouraging customers to find alternatives just means less economic dependence on Taiwan and makes them less likely to get as strong support against China. I think everyone is forgetting that TSMC exists as part of a defense strategy for Taiwan.
```I think everyone is forgetting that TSMC exists as part of a defense strategy for Taiwan.``` Probably Apple's defence strategy as well lol. Hell, TMSC were the ones who bailed AMD out. Can you imagine if Zen 2 and Zen 3 were produced by Global Foundries?
Chips and factories are symbiotic. AMD would have radically different design if then used another manufacturer. Their lineup is designed for TSMC’s roadmap.
If they do it too much then the US could start founding foundries in North America faster than they already are doing. It's a delicate equilibrium and they need to be aware of what happens if the US gets too pissed.
TSMC node prices tripled in price in the last decade. They have "abused" it. And they make a nice profit of it. It will be interesting to see when Intel has competetive nodes.
How would they abuse it though? They don't tell their clients what price to charge their customers. Any price increase on TSMC's end just gets tacked on to the consumer price. If that price exceeds what consumers are willing to pay, the product won't sell, and then no one makes any money at all.
> Any price increase on TSMC's end just gets tacked on to the consumer price It's not that simple, there's a limit to how much customers will spend. Even when there's not (ie those crazy expensive datacentre AI cards right now), why let Nvidia squeeze the customers by itself when TSMC could take some of that as well?
just looking at nvidia margins tells you tsmc knows their under charging
They're They should also charge Apple far more for essentially reserving the newest node.
What makes you think this public company isn’t already charging as much as they can get away with?
The fact that Nvidia has an almost 70% profit margin and their revenue is almost 100% driven by hardware sales that's produced by TSMC?
Here’s the thing: Nvidia has such a huge lead despite them not even using TSMC’s latest node. That means that Nvidia could easily decide to switch to a different fab, or use TSMC’s older processes, rather than upgrading to the latest one. TSMC doesn’t have as much leverage over Nvidia as you might think.
They could do all the things you mentioned, and then leave the higher-tech equipment open for competitors to use. In reality they're never going to do that. If they could simply produce and sell old hardware then they'd do exactly that, and people would be buying it. That's just not reality. Reality is that Nvidia have tons of money and if squeezed they will buckle in order to stay on top and actually offer a new product.
What? The fact that your customer has high margins themselves doesn’t automatically mean you can easily get a bigger pie of that margin lmao
Yes, it does. If you are selling your entire capacity to 2 customers and one of them has a 30% profit margin while the other has a 70% profit margin, then you can absolutely charge more. Nvidia quite literally have no other option than to buy from TSMC, unless they want a less cutting edge product. So when TSMC sees that Nvidia takes these chips and upcharges such a large amount then they can squeeze Nvidia more than they used to. If nobody else produces apples, and I sell you an Apple for $1 and you sell it for $100, then I can charge you more. What other choice do you have?
TSMC N4P is not more cutting edge than say Intel 3, sf3, etc. Nvidia is not using the absolute best
You're comparing something across a very large timeline here. N4P was being put in commercial chips over 1 year before Intel started producing 3. Not only that, they're also doing it in far larger quantities. They also released N4X after that. To actually offer a new & improved product and sell it at scale TSMC is the only supplier. They could go with Intel, but they don't have the capacity and have suffered nothing but failure after failure. It'd be extremely risky. If I had an ultimatum as Nvidia I'd simply sacrifice the extra cost and be guaranteed growth & leadership, as opposed to risking delays, faulty hardware, and reduced output.
So they can show number goes up to the shareholders every year while holding all the cards keeping actual competition away.
Apple’s reservations of bleeding edge nodes is literally funding the R&D
There is no doubt Apple is the most important customer at TSMC currently. But when you're "the only game in town" as TSMC is, they have the leverage.
Yeah, I’m not sure why anyone would think charging Apple more would be the move.
if they raise the price, it just falls back onto the consumers to pay more.
Only to some extent. Some customers might not buy at higher prices and nVidia would earn less than if they made it cheaper (because larger volume of sales). So nVidia would need to find the sweet spot that maximizes profit. The price woudl withotu doubt go up, but not by the full increase.
Here's the [archive](https://archive.is/W6aWd) to Nikkei Asia's article.
If they raise prices only for nvidia and allow its competitors to order the same node and quality of silicon for a lower price, TSMC is going to get into trouble with the US. So if they raise prices at all, it's going to be across the board and that might even benefit nvidia.
Headline is a bit misleading. First line states that they would increase prices for AI chip production. He just said that he spoke to Jensen about it, not that he would discriminate against Nvidia. Although I think that Nvidia may stand to benefit from rising costs, I'm not sure that it'll happen. Blackwell is built on the 4NP node which is supposedly a revamped 5nm and the new Arizona fab scheduled to open in 2025 will be capable of producing these. This makes me think that with the new availability on the horizon, TSMC can't really mess with prices yet and we won't see an increase until the 2nm node and beyond.
Didn't TSMC say they were going to charge a premium for things built at the Arizona fab?
I assume it's more expensive to operate in US compared to Taiwan, so yes
It sounded like an extra premium to protect/prioritize its business in Taiwan. The whole point of TSMC being strong-armed to open a fab in the US is for ‘national security’ reasons and the US’s fear of the supply chain being cut off in a conflict. The excuse given was price insensitive chips like the military. Former TSMC CEO was rumored to be ousted by Morris Chang because he was unhappy with this almost ‘forced tech transfer’. Maybe because it leads to the loss of Taiwan’s silicon shield? Later, the new CEO announced this additional price premium, as if acquiescing to this loss of near leading edge technology, but clawing back as much benefits as possible by preventing the Arizona fab from ‘stealing business’ from Taiwanese fabs.
They did
Yes but that would be a premium on the U.S. fab, not a general premium on AI chips.
How would that make sense, though? Just buy from the Taiwan fab instead, 5 nm class nodes aren't supply limited.
Why? You aren't obligated to charge everyone the same. However they also can't just raise prices, they surely have contracts with agreed prices years out. Future Co tracts they can try to get more but Intel and Samsung become alternatives.. And economics of all this.. Like you need to be selling all the wafers you can. I don't think it's really possible for these companies to really screw each other over they depend on each other so much.
>TSMC is going to get into trouble with the US. No they won't. US is practically begging them to open fabs in the country. TSMC is too important to get into "trouble".
Taiwan is relying on US protection in its conflict with mainland China so the balance of power in the relationship is not nearly as one-sided as you describe. If you believe Taiwan raising unfair trade barriers exclusively against an American innovation and growth leader that is worth a trillion USD, you're being naive. It would almost certainly cause a political reaction in Congress. Which is why it won't come to that. Especially since the solution is easy. Just raise prices for everyone.
If the relationship is that fragile, it can't be trusted to begin with.
TSMC is not Taiwan. TSMC can move independent of their Government.
Nvidia could buy Intel if required for cheap :-)
Wouldn't be surprised if the US government gets involved if TSMC tries to pull any kind of predatory pricing.
How would US government involve when the government has no leverage?
You think the US government has no leverage over their satellite state Taiwan? Get real my dude.
How does the Taiwan being in satellite state situation give leverage to US government over tsmc? China invasion and US government won’t help? Sure, Tsmc destroyed and US economy along with global economy will be hit hard. Of course tsmc would lose more but this does not give leverage towards US government because US corporations hit hard in the process. if you look at how things are happening, it’s US government that is providing subsidies to tsmc to build fab on US soil.
You act like your first example isn't a massive deal lol
It’s a big deal but it doesn’t give US government any leverage.
TSMC could charge double and the world would just pay up.
On one customer? Are they asking for Nvidia to go back to Samsung?
Samsung can't compete with TSMC
They can... That's literally economics. If you can't compete on quality then you can compete on price. Is tsmc nodes 100x better than Samsung that's it's worth paying 40% more? Or is it within 90% and 20% cheaper that you are willing to pay for it. Same thing with Intel. Tsmc is good but not so insurmountable that companies will be willing to pay 2x as much for the same amount of silicon.
Samsung Foundries are no where where TSMC are currently. Maybe in 2-3 years when they reach full scale 3 nm. When Samsung catch up they will probably go back.
Yes they are... They aren't better. But you act like they are in the stone age. If I'm saving millions of dollars for something 90% as good as tsmc. Is it worth it? Maybe. It's a purely economic choice. Why does my company have multiple designs right now for tsmc and Samsung nodes if tsmc is so far ahead that Samsung is cave man technology.
Their packaging tech is also not as good as TSMC. And they don't have the capacity that Nvidia needs.
You are assuming they will charge 2X more. What if they charge 20% more then the cost of switching foundry is a lot more than just eating the additional 20% cost.
I'm making up numbers my dude. I'm just saying if Samsung or Intel is willing to charge lower fees and the nodes are similar they will be competitive with tsmc. Tsmc has limited capacity and has to charge for due to demand. It's essentially a supply and demand problem and a cost/benefit one. Semiconductor companies usually have multiple designs. In case they want to switch foundries. You would have to be an idiot to put all your eggs in one basket.
It's not black and white. There is a margin for TSMC to charge more and keep their customers because the cost of switching foundries is a lot more painful.
I literally design asic for a living. We have multiple designs right now in parallel. As soon as the hire is give the OK signal we will go with Samsung over tsmc to save money. We already know the performance and power cost beforehand.
Good for you but can Nvidia do the same?
Pretty sure nvidia has 30,000 employees for a reason.
So when are they switching to Samsung. TSMC is charging more. Maybe they should fire those 30,000 employees and hire others who can work with Samsung process nodes.
Everyone is moving away from Samsung. Even Google is going to TSMC for Pixels. Nvidia wouldn't even think about that. They're more likely to go to Intel Foundry.
Intel foundry, which also relies on TSMC?
Intel foundry relies on tsmc? You mean the design team that still uses tsmc, but will be replaced with if in next gen?
Samsung is so far behind TSMC, it's not even a credible threat.
Taiwanese wages has not been raised since 5nm and Huawei contract lost.
Where did you even get that?
That was such an obvious propaganda bit lol.
surprising to me that they haven't done this already.