Overview
- TSMC’s Fab21 in Arizona has turned out its first Nvidia Blackwell wafer, a milestone Jensen Huang celebrated at an event in Phoenix.
- The wafer must still be diced and packaged using CoWoS with HBM3e, a step currently done in Taiwan due to a lack of equivalent US capacity.
- TSMC’s C. C. Wei said Amkor’s US advanced-packaging facility is breaking ground with commercial readiness expected around 2027–2028.
- Nvidia has not specified which Blackwell variant was fabricated in Arizona, and it is also exploring alternative packaging options such as Intel’s EMIB and Foveros.
- Some Blackwell-based products using GDDR7 do not require CoWoS, and PC Gamer notes it is likely that near-term consumer GPUs will continue to be built in Taiwan.