Nvidia Reportedly Eyeing 5nm Chips Even As Apple, AMD Ramp Up Orders

From the 250nm process node in 1997 to the 7nm node in 2018, the chip industry has consistently strived to shrink the node in a bid to increase transistor density and reduce power consumption. Pure-play semiconductor foundry Taiwan Semiconductor Mfg. Co. Ltd. TSM has now embarked on manufacturing 5nm process nodes, with reports suggesting volume production could start this month.

Graphics chipmaker NVIDIA Corporation NVDA is reportedly looking to use TSMC's 5nm process nodes, according to Tom's Hardware, which quoted a report in Digitimes.

Since the yet-to-be-released Ampere graphics card is supposed to come with the 7nm process technology, it is unlikely that Nvidia will release a consumer GPU with a 5nm chip anytime soon, Tom's Hardware said. It's unknown as to how Nvidia could deploy the 5nm chips.

Apart from the 5nm chips, the Digitimes report said Nvidia has also placed large orders for 16nm, 12nm and 7nm nodes, with the former two used in the company's Tegra X1 processor meant for the NINTENDO LTD/ADR NTDOY Switch and GPUs based on the Pascal and Volta architectures, while the latter is being ordered for the Ampere architecture-based GPUs.

Rivals Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. AMD and Apple Inc. AAPL have also placed 5nm orders, the report said. AMD is likely to take a plunge into the 5nm technology with its EPYC Genoa processors.

Nvidia shares were trading 1.12% higher at $287.18 at the time of publication Friday. 

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