Both customers and Nvidia itself have been significantly disappointed with the stock issues surrounding the RTX 30 Series this year. Stores have remained out of stock since the products first launched back in September, and recent reports suggest things won’t improve anytime soon. In what seems to be a move to try and alleviate some of the supply limitations, Nvidia has signed a new contract with Samsung to secure additional manufacturing capacity.
Initial reporting comes from Korean news outlet KED, which notes that the deal is worth hundreds of billions of won currency. When translated to USD, it’s still a sizeable figure. We’re talking in the ballpark of hundreds of millions of dollars. That’s still chump change compared to the overall silicon industry, but it’s a noteworthy development to say the least.
This news is also significant, because it dispels earlier rumors that Nvidia planned to switch manufacturing to the Taiwanese-based TSMC foundries. It seems the deal came down to a bidding war and Samsung won yet again. For the foreseeable future, Nvidia’s RTX 30 Series will be manufactured exclusively on the 8nm Samsung node as opposed to TSMC’s 7nm.
Apparently good for Nvidia, and good for gamers
Considering the global supply limitations for the semiconductor industry, less reliance on TSMC is probably a good thing overall. Nvidia’s interest in pursuing an alternative manufacturer to industry leader TSMC should result in more GPUs getting into the hands of gamers sooner. Meanwhile, AMD is free to enjoy more availability with TSMC, which will also help it meet CPU and GPU global demand.
Behold, the illusive RTX 3080.
The real question going forward for Nvidia is whether or not Samsung has the ability to be a reliable partner for Team Green. Samsung’s 8nm yields are reportedly not as good as TSMC’s 7nm, so we will just have to watch how the partnership unfolds.
Another question worth raising is the intent of the latest contract between the two companies. We suspect a full lineup of Ti products are inbound, but we’re also waiting on the mobile versions of Ampere GPUs. With a GeForce event scheduled for January 12 and CES 2021 coming up, we’re paying close attention to what’s next for Nvidia. Until then, not much is likely to change in regards to what we know about Nvidia RTX 30 Series stock.
