The partnership and new arrangement between the two giants comes as something of a surprise; prior to the deal, TSMC, the Taiwanese semiconductor foundry, was the main provider of chips to NVIDIA. Now, Samsung will be responsible for fabricating, manufacturing, and producing the 7nm EUV process, which NVIDIA will then use for the production of its next-generation Ampere GPU architecture. One particular reason behind NVIDIA’s sudden change of heart in chip manufacturer is pricing; according to SamMobile, Samsung had “aggressively undercut” TSMC on the price per fab. It’s not entirely clear how much cheaper the Korean giant is undercutting TSMC, but it clearly has to be a substantial amount for NVIDIA to suddenly change its tune.
The deal between NVIDIA and Samsung is more or less a generous windfall for the latter. It’s also the second major GPU brand to actually engage its services this year. Prior to this, both Samsung and AMD – NVIDIA’s chief rival in the graphics industry – entered into “multi-year strategic partnership” that will see future Samsung smartphones using AMD’s new RDNA graphics architecture. (Source: SamMobile)
