Samsung to tap rival TSMC for part of Nvidia's custom memory chips, report says
Samsung will work with rival TSMC for the first time on Nvidia's new custom AI memory, NVHBM, a Seoul business daily reported on Sunday, citing industry sources.
Archive image · Photo: The White House / Wikimedia Commons, Public domain (cropped and resized)
Samsung Electronics will use Taiwanese rival TSMC's 3-nanometre process to make the base die for a new custom high-bandwidth memory chip it is developing for Nvidia, the Seoul Economic Daily reported on Sunday, citing unnamed industry sources. It would be the first time the two companies have cooperated at the HBM manufacturing stage, a type of memory crucial to AI data centres. Reuters also carried the report. Samsung, TSMC and Nvidia did not immediately comment.
Nvidia unveiled the custom memory, NVHBM, in August. Based on the HBM4E standard, its base die integrates Nvidia's own memory controller. According to the report, Nvidia has asked all three of its suppliers, Samsung, SK hynix and Micron, to have that die made by TSMC and to use a common sixth-generation DRAM process, known as 1c, for the memory layers, aiming for consistent performance and less validation work.
Samsung has so far made both the memory and logic parts in-house. The report said that will continue for standard HBM and for custom products for other customers such as AMD. Samsung is also assessing whether its own foundry could step in if NVHBM demand exceeds TSMC's capacity, it said.