All industries are affected by the problem. Manufacturers of smartphones, televisions, vehicles, consoles, and any other connected device are therefore in constant struggle to secure stocks of components, and meet demand. Even Nintendo, which is used to taking a huge lead, fears that it will not be able to supply enough of its Switches. Today it’s NVIDIA, manufacturer of graphics cards, which interests us.
The company is working on the next generation of graphics cards, including by changing the fineness of the engraving to follow the evolutions from AMD and Intel. Indeed, NVIDIA intends to burn its new chips in 5 nm and no longer in 8 nm. For this, the company has close to TSMC, the Taiwanese manufacturer of semiconductors. But beyond the technical ambition, it is necessary be able to put these cards on the market, and the public knows how much he is, even today, hard to get hold of RTX 30XX cards. Leader in terms of 5 nm engraving, TSMC therefore receives orders from many customers, which obviously raises the question of production capacities.
NVIDIA is not a legacy customer, and TSMC must prioritize some orders over others to survive. Determined to get the components it needs, the company NVIDIA has therefore visibly taken out the checkbook. According to information from the Chinese site MyDrivers, the company in total, planned to spend $ 6.9 billion to secure a good place on the production line, and therefore receive the necessary elements.
Specifically, NVIDIA has already paid a deposit of 1.64 billion, and another payment of 1.79 billion would already be foreseen. At present, however, it is impossible to know whether these sums are correct, and, if they are, assess NVIDIA’s future ability to meet demand. In addition, such expenses could have consequences on the price of the material, already very high.
