Cutting through the 'fake news', Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang says Blackwell's design flaw was '100% Nvidia's fault' and there are no tensions with TSMC

UNITED STATES - SEPTEMBER 13: Jensen Huang, CEO of NVIDIA, arrives for the Inaugural AI Insight Forum in Russell Building on Capitol Hill, on Wednesday, September 13, 2023. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)

(Image credit: Tom Williams via Getty Images)

After delays, Nvidia's Blackwell chips are finally shipping to customers, but the roll-out hasn't been completely smooth, as there were recent reports that Nvidia's and TSMC's relationship might be showing signs of stress over some Blackwell chip failures. Now, Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang has clarified that there aren't any tensions between the two companies and the problem was "100% Nvidia's fault".

As reported by Reuters, Huang admits a Blackwell design flaw but lays blame entirely at Nvidia's own feet. He says "a design flaw with its latest Blackwell AI chips which impacted production has been fixed with the help of longtime Taiwanese manufacturing partner TSMC."

So much for the blame game supposedly occurring between the AI and chip giants, then—reports of tensions between the two companies Huang reportedly called "fake news". And so much for Nvidia eyeing up Samsung for its chip production—a claim we were rightly very sceptical about. Whatever the original sources were for the initial reports, they appear to have been wrong. All seems rosy in the land of Team Green—well, besides the still somewhat slowed Blackwell release.

Reuters also reports that Nvidia's shares "fell around 2% in early trading", perhaps hinting that this was related to the "fake news". Big picture-wise, though, Nvidia's going from strength to strength and a 2% drop in early trading will matter little. The company's still the hottest thing in the burgeoning AI market, and if the non-fatal Blackwell flaw is now completely fixed as Huang says, there's little to worry about.

Which is especially beneficial given Blackwell chips have already started shipping and are already lining some server racks. Yes, there's been a little delay, but now it seems like Blackwell—which Nvidia thinks could be the "most successful product" in its history—is ready to churn through the next wave of cloud and AI server workloads.

TOPICS

Jacob got his hands on a gaming PC for the first time when he was about 12 years old. He swiftly realised the local PC repair store had ripped him off with his build and vowed never to let another soul build his rig again. With this vow, Jacob the hardware junkie was born. Since then, Jacob's led a double-life as part-hardware geek, part-philosophy nerd, first working as a Hardware Writer for PCGamesN in 2020, then working towards a PhD in Philosophy for a few years while freelancing on the side for sites such as TechRadar, Pocket-lint, and yours truly, PC Gamer. Eventually, he gave up the ruthless mercenary life to join the world's #1 PC Gaming site full-time. It's definitely not an ego thing, he assures us.