NVIDIA Blackwell made in the US, packaged in Taiwan

Last week, NVIDIA announced that the first Blackwell wafer had been manufactured by TSMC in the United States. The company described this as a major milestone because it enables volume production of its most advanced products outside of Taiwan.

However, this announcement missed an important detail, one we initially overlooked as well, since we don’t usually focus on fabrication logistics. Those wafers will still be sent to Taiwan for packaging, where specialized facilities are available for this process. For data center Blackwell chips, packaging involves TSMC’s advanced CoWoS-S process, which combines GPU dies, a large silicon interposer, and HBM3E memory.

Source:PCMag

TechPowerUp points out that this doesn’t mean full chip production in the U.S. won’t happen eventually. TSMC plans to outsource packaging to Amkor, which is already building facilities in Arizona, the same state where the Blackwell wafers are produced. Volume packaging in the U.S. is expected to begin around 2028.

It’s worth remembering that AMD went through a similar process with its Fiji GPUs and first-generation Ryzen CPUs. Former AMD employee James Prior recalled how Summit Ridge processors traveled across multiple countries before reaching consumers.

So while the Blackwell wafers may be produced in the U.S., the complete chip is not.

Source: TechPowerUP