Nvidia reportedly wants all its HBM suppliers to use TSMC’s 3nm process

Samsung Electronics will make a core part of Nvidia’s custom memory chips on TSMC’s 3-nanometre process. The Seoul Economic Daily reported the move on Sunday, citing industry sources. It would be the first time the two have worked together on making high-bandwidth memory (HBM).

The part is the base die, the logic layer at the bottom of an HBM stack. Until now, Samsung has made both the base die and the memory dies above it for all of its HBM. That is called a turnkey approach. It has decided to change that for Nvidia, according to the report.

What Nvidia asked for

NVHBM is Nvidia’s custom HBM, unveiled in August. Nvidia has asked all three of its NVHBM suppliers to make the base die on TSMC’s 3nm process. Those suppliers are Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron. Nvidia also wants the memory dies standardised on 1c, the sixth generation of DRAM technology. NVHBM uses the design of HBM4E, the seventh generation of HBM.

The reason is consistency, the newspaper said. When suppliers use different methods, one design is hard to make perform the same way across all of them. A common process also means Nvidia does not have to validate each supplier’s chips separately. Samsung’s Device Solutions division agreed after an internal review.

The two companies worked together four years ago, when Samsung made sure its HBM fitted TSMC’s packaging process.

Why the base die matters

NVHBM moves the memory controller off the GPU and onto the base die. That is according to a second Seoul Economic Daily report. That frees space on the GPU for more computing circuits. To make room, the physical layer that talks to other chips is 60% smaller than in standard HBM. The result is up to 30% more bandwidth and 15% less power than standard HBM4E, the report said.

The industry puts TSMC’s 3nm yield at more than 90%. That compares with about 60% for Samsung Foundry’s comparable 2nm process, SF2.

A supply gap

UBS expects HBM demand of about 61.5 billion gigabits next year, up 91%. It expects new shipments from memory makers of only 54.6 billion gigabits. That leaves a shortfall of about 10%, the newspaper said.

TSMC is adding two 3nm lines at Fab 18 in Tainan. Mass production is due to start in the first half of 2027 and of 2028. It also plans 3nm lines at its second plants in Arizona and in Kumamoto, Japan.

Samsung keeps its own route

Samsung will keep the turnkey approach for its standard HBM4 and HBM4E, which use its own 4nm base dies. It will also keep it for custom HBM for other customers, including AMD. It is also testing whether its own foundry could make the NVHBM base die on its 2nm process. That is a hedge in case demand outgrows TSMC’s capacity, an industry official said.