Nvidia Taps Samsung, Micron For New Gaming Chips

Nvidia has long worked with a variety of chip manufacturers to fabricate its devices, and more recently has relied on Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co Ltd for its most advanced chips.

Samsung will make the new GeForce chips with its 8-nanometer chipmaking process rather than its latest 5nm process. However, Nvidia officials said they worked with Samsung to customize the process so that Nvidia chips will be about 10% faster than other Samsung-made chips manufactured with the same 8nm process.

“Process technology is a lot more complex than a number. I think people have simplified it down to almost a ridiculous level,” Nvidia Chief Executive Jensen Huang told investors on a conference call last month, explaining why the company does not always use the newest chipmaking technology.

Nvidia’s chips use a number of technologies to boost graphics performance, such as using an artificial intelligence processor to make predictions about how light rays should move in a scene rather than manually calculating each ray.