Report: NVIDIA Demands Samsung and Others Use TSMC 3nm for NVHBM Base Dies

According to a report by the Seoul Economic Daily on October 18, NVIDIA has imposed technical requirements on its three major High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) suppliers—Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix, and Micron—to uniformly use TSMC's 3-nanometer process for producing the logic base dies of its new custom HBM, known as NVHBM. This move aims to ensure performance consistency across different suppliers and simplify NVIDIA's product validation procedures.

The report states that NVIDIA believes differing process nodes among suppliers could lead to performance variations in NVHBM, increasing integration challenges. Samsung, after internal evaluation, decided to comply with this requirement. This marks a potential shift for Samsung, breaking away from its previous vertically integrated model where its own foundry division handled the production of HBM base dies, and instead seeking contract manufacturing from rival TSMC.

NVHBM, released by NVIDIA in August based on the HBM4E architecture, features controllers and interface specifications defined by NVIDIA itself. The report notes that Samsung will continue to maintain its in-house manufacturing model for custom HBM supplied to other clients like AMD. Additionally, Samsung is evaluating the feasibility of using its own process for NVHBM base dies to mitigate risks associated with potential future capacity constraints at TSMC.