Nvidia reportedly order 12nm fab space at TSMC

Nvidia reportedly order 12nm fab space at TSMC

| Source: ExPreview Author: Mark Campbell

Nvidia reportedly order 12nm fab space at TSMC

Nvidia has reportedly ordered 12nm fab space at TSMC, potentially creating their upcoming Volta GPUs or Xavier SoCs on the new production node.

What needs to be noted here is that TSMC's 12nm process is not a true 12nm, with the process actually being the 4th generation 16nm process from the company. While this may sound like false advertising on the part of TSMC, it must be remembered that the names of modern manufacturing processes are simply marketing terms and are not necessarily related to any characteristics of the node itself.

Naming this 4th generation 16nm node 12nm is a huge sign of confidence from TSMC and the performance/power characteristics of this new processing node. This new node is aimed to provide lower cost manufacturing and reduced leakage, which will improve the efficiency of products using this new manufacturing process.

Right now very little is known about Nvidia's new Volta GPU architecture, though it is expected that it will be first GPU generation from the company to use HBM memory on Geforce/consumer-oriented products, and offer greater power efficiency than their older Pascal counterparts.

At this time it is unknown when Nvidia will release their first Volta-series GPUs, though it will likely be in late 2017 or early 2018.

You can join the discussion on Nvidia reported use of TSMC's 12nm process on the OC3D Forums.

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