Nvidia considers having chips made by Intel

Intel and Nvidia are in talks about manufacturing Nvidia’s chips. Both parties say it could be a long time before an agreement is final. Nvidia now has chips made by TSMC and Samsung. It doesn’t look like the company wants to stop doing this.

It is not clear which chips Nvidia wants to have built by Intel. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang says according to including Tom’s Hardware that his strategy is to have ‘diversity and margin’ within the supply chain. Huang does not say why, but he probably wants to make the supply chain less dependent on one party and thus increase security of supply.

The CEO says that he is now satisfied with TSMC, but also “encouraged” by the work that Intel is doing. He also notes that the two companies already work together a lot. He also does not expect any negative consequences if Intel soon learns more about Nvidia when it starts building its chips. “Intel has known our secrets for years; AMD has known our secrets for years,” says Huang. “We share our roadmaps, confidentially of course. The industry has learned to work that way.”

Although Nvidia intends to partner with Intel to make Nvidia’s chips, intent alone is not enough, according to Huang. “We need to align our technology, business models, capacity and processes. It takes a lot of time and deep discussions; we are not buying milk here. It has taken years to build our partnerships with TSMC and Samsung. So we are very open minded in considering Intel.”

Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger confirms to Reuters that talks are underway between the two companies, but that there is no timeline yet. A year ago, Intel announced Foundy Services, a business unit that will manufacture chips for outside companies. This concerns, for example, x86, Arm and RISC-V processors. The company will also build additional factories for this industry, including in Germany. Qualcomm and Amazon Web Services have also already expressed interest in Intel Foundry Services.