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Samsung will not make Pascal

by on16 September 2015


TSMC gets the deal


Nvidia is to launch the Pascal GPU next year as a successor of the Maxwell GPU and originally it had been suspected that it would be made in Samsung's fabs using its 14nm technology.

But the dark satanic rumour mill suggests that Nvidia has offered the contract to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC).

This is a little odd given that Samsung started producing 14-nm FETs before TSMC and is supposed to be a bit better at it.

TSMC has been a partner of Nvidia's for 20 years and they have always had a consistent production process, so may be it has decided to go with the devil it knows.

It is bad news for Samsung. The Pascal GPU is set to take next-generation even further and it would be good to have it on its CV.

Pascal, which is named after a philosopher who wrote about pensees [which we hope is not a typo] will have 17 billion transistors, more VRAM and better HBM2memory capacity and will arrive just as 4K is taking off. Pascal provides NVLINK, which could solve a bandwidth issues that many powerful GPUs are facing.

If Nvidia is not lying then we will get 1TB/s bandwidth, twice as much when compared to AMD's Fiji cards and three times that of the GeForce 980 Ti.

Last modified on 16 September 2015
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