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“We are now running production silicon in Arizona.” So says none other than Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang. Exactly what silicon? How many chips? Hold those thoughts.
The term “production silicon” is a significant upgrade from previous confirmations from Nvidia that it merely had plans to make chips at TSMC’s factory in Arizona. Likewise, “production silicon” is very much distinct from “test chips” or “prototype chips” and clearly implies that Nvidia is now using TSMC Arizona to make chips it will actually sell.
But what chips, exactly? There have been numerous reports that Nvidia would make Blackwell AI GPUs in Arizona as opposed to GPUs for gaming. Even if that isn’t immediately promising in terms of gaming graphics card availability, it could have a knock-on effect.
If Nvidia has access to a new source of production capacity for its AI chips from TSMC’s Arizona fab, perhaps there might be a bit more space to make gaming GPUs elsewhere.
Indeed, Nvidia’s use of Arizona might explain why Nvidia stuck with TSMC’s N4 node for the whole Blackwell generation of GPUs, including both AI chips and RTX 50-series gaming graphics.
TSMC’s N4 technology is really a refinement of its N5 node, as used by Nvidia for the RTX 40-series. Using N4 for RTX 50 has limited Nvidia’s ability to increase the complexity of its GPUs for this latest generation, which in turn has made for largely disappointing generational performance upgrades.
However, TSMC’s new Arizona fab is an N4 facility which is also producing CPU dies for AMD. It is not making chips on TSMC’s most advanced N3 node. For now, N3 is exclusive to TSMC’s Taiwan factories. In other words, in order to have access to the greatest possible production capacity, including making chips in the USA, maybe Blackwell needed to be on N4, not N3.
It’s worth noting that Apple sold its first products with N3 silicon over a year before Blackwell chips on N4 began shipping to customers. So, at the very least Nvidia has not been aggressive in moving to latest available node.
Of course, we’ll never know if the main driver behind Nvidia’s decision to use N4 for Blackwell and RTX 50 was capacity, including a desire to make chips in the USA. Likewise, we don’t know how many chips Nvidia is making in Arizona. The volumes may not be terribly large, for now.
But Jensen Huang’s revelation that Nvidia is now making any chips at all in the USA has got to be good news for gamers desperate to get their hands on reasonably priced graphics cards.
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Kurt Indovina
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