Nvidia CEO describes TSMC as 'closest' partner

San Francisco, March 19 (CNA) Jensen Huang (黃仁勳), CEO of U.S.-based graphics processing unit (GPU) designer Nvidia Corp. on Tuesday described contract chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) as one of his company's 'closest' partners.

"Our partnership with TSMC is probably one of the closest of any partnerships we have," Huang said as he spoke with international reporters on the sidelines of its annual GPU technology conference (GTC) in San Jose, California.

Nvidia unveiled its latest flagship artificial intelligence (AI) chip -- the Blackwell B200 tensor core chip -- at the GTC on Monday, the first day of the event.

The Blackwell B200 is packed with 208 billion transistors and manufactured using TSMC's N4P (4-nanometer) process technology.

In comparison, Nvidia's previous GPU, Hopper, introduced in 2022, had 80 billion transistors.

According to Nvidia, shipments of the new AI chip are scheduled for later this year.

Huang praised TSMC's outstanding technologies, saying while Nvidia was just at the beginning of the long AI development, and he had faith that TSMC "is going to grow" as the Taiwanese chipmaker has been "perfectly" positioned in the generative AI journey.

"The things that we do are very very hard," Huang said.

Huang said it was not simple at all in terms of the supply chain in the global semiconductor industry, which needed lots of coordination, and TSMC has played a critical role.

According to Huang, TSMC will use Nvidia's new computational lithography platform in the manufacturing of its new chips.

The Nvidia CEO said on Monday that his company's partnership with the world's largest contract chipmaker "applies accelerated computing and generative AI to open new frontiers for semiconductor [production]."

Local media has reported Nvidia was the second largest client of TSMC in 2023 by placing US$7.73 billion orders to the Taiwanese company, which accounted for 11 percent of the chipmaker's total sales.

Apple ranked as TSMC's top client in 2023, making up 25 percent of the chipmaker's total revenue, the report said.