TAIPEI/SINGAPORE (Reuters) – Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSM, 2330.TW) is in discussions with Nvidia Corp (NVDA) to produce its Blackwell artificial intelligence chips in the subcontractor’s new factory in Arizona, three sources familiar with the matter said.
TSMC is already preparing to start production early next year, the sources said.
Nvidia’s Blackwell chips, which the company unveiled in March, have until now been manufactured at TSMC’s facilities in Taiwan. The company has seen strong demand from customers involved in generative AI and accelerated computing for the chips, which it says are 30 times faster for tasks such as providing responses from chatbots.
The deal, if finalized, would secure another customer for TSMC’s Arizona factory, which is expected to begin volume production next year.
TSMC and Nvidia declined to comment. The sources declined to be identified because the interviews were confidential.
Two of the sources said that Apple (AAPL) and advanced micro-devices (AMD) are current customers of the Arizona factory. Apple and AMD did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
However, even if TSMC plans to produce the front-end process for Nvidia’s Blackwell chips in Arizona, the chips will still need to be sent back to Taiwan for packaging. The Arizona plant does not have chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) capability, which is essential for Blackwell’s chips, two of the sources said.
All of TSMC’s CoWoS capacity is currently in Taiwan.
Taiwan’s TSMC, the world’s largest contract chipmaker, is investing tens of billions of dollars to build three facilities in Phoenix and the project has secured large subsidies from the U.S. government, which wants to bring back semiconductor manufacturing. -drivers in the United States.
(Reporting by Wen-Yee Lee in Taipei and Fanny Potkin in Singapore; editing by Brenda Goh and Jacqueline Wong)