Nvidia's Next-Gen AI Chip 'Blackwell' Faces Delay, Impacting Tech Giants

Nvidia's upcoming AI chips reportedly face delay of 3 months or more due to design flaw

The chips may be delayed by three months or more, which could affect Nvidia's customers including Meta Platforms Inc., Google LLC and Microsoft Corp. Nvidia this week informed Microsoft about a delay affecting the most advanced AI chip models in the Blackwell series, according to an unidentified Microsoft employee and another person. The delays mean big shipments aren't expected until the first quarter of 2025, The Information added. A spokesperson for Nvidia wouldn't comment on its statements to customers about the delay, according to the report, but told The Information that "production is on track to ramp" later this year. Microsoft, Google, Amazon Web Services and Meta declined to comment to the publication, while a TSMC spokesperson didn't respond to a request for comment.

Nvidia's new AI chip delayed due to design flaws, says report | Mint

Nvidia Corp.'s upcoming artificial intelligence chips will be delayed due to design flaws, The Information reports, citing two unidentified people who help produce the chip and its server hardware. The chips may be delayed by three months or more, which could affect Nvidia's customers including Meta Platforms Inc., Google LLC and Microsoft Corp. Nvidia this week informed Microsoft about a delay affecting the most advanced AI chip models in the Blackwell series, according to an unidentified Microsoft employee and another person. The delays mean big shipments aren't expected until the first quarter of 2025, The Information added. A spokesperson for Nvidia wouldn't comment on its statements to customers about the delay, according to the report, but told The Information that "production is on track to ramp" later this year. Microsoft, Google, Amazon Web Services and Meta declined to comment to the publication, while a TSMC spokesperson didn't respond to a request for comment.

Nvidia reportedly delays its next AI chip due to a design flaw

Nvidia has reportedly told Microsoft and at least one other cloud provider that its "Blackwell" B200 AI chips will take at least three months longer to produce than was planned, according to The Information. The delay is the result of a design flaw discovered "unusually late in the production process," according to two unnamed sources, including a Microsoft employee, cited by the outlet. B200 chips are the follow-up to the supremely popular and hard-to-get H100 chips that power vast swaths of the artificial intelligence cloud landscape (and helped make Nvidia one of the most valuable companies in the world). Nvidia expects production of the chip "to ramp in 2H," according to a statement that Nvidia spokesperson John Rizzo shared with The Verge. "Beyond that, we don't comment on rumors." Nvidia is now reportedly working through a fresh set of test runs with chip producer Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, and won't ship large numbers of Blackwell chips until the first quarter. The Information writes that Microsoft, Google, and Meta, have ordered "tens of billions of dollars" worth of the chips. The report comes just months after Nvidia said that "Blackwell-based products will be available from partners" starting in 2024. The new chips are supposed to kick off a new yearly cadence of AI chips from the company as several other tech firms, such as AMD, work to spin up their own AI chip competitors.

Delay to Nvidia's new AI chip could affect Microsoft, Google, Meta, Information says

Aug 2 (Reuters) - Design flaws could cause a delay of three months or more in the launch of chip giant Nvidia's upcoming artificial intelligence chips, tech-focused publication the Information said on Friday. The setback could affect customers such as Meta , Google, and Microsoft who have collectively ordered tens of billions of dollars worth of chips, it added, citing people who help produce chip and server hardware for Nvidia. (Reporting by Surbhi Misra in Bengaluru; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)

NVIDIA's Blackwell AI chips have reportedly hit a snag and may arrive months late

The company discovered 'design flaws' late in the production process, according to The Information. NVIDIA has discovered "design flaws" in its upcoming series of AI chips that may push their release back at least three months, reports. The company has reportedly started notifying customers of the delay, including Microsoft. Large orders of the new Blackwell chips were initially slated to start shipping sometime this year, but sources told The Information that they're now not expected until early 2025. In addition to Microsoft, the publication reports that Google, Meta and other major companies have placed bulk orders of the Blackwell chips that are collectively worth "tens of billions of dollars." NVIDIA back in March, touting performance boosts of up to 30 times what's achieved by its flagship H100, which serves as the backbone for some of today's biggest AI systems. The company at the time also said the Blackwell chips could reduce "cost and energy consumption by up to 25x." But according to The Information, citing sources involved with the Blackwell chip, "design problems arose unusually late in the production process." NVIDIA and its chip manufacturer, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, are now doing test production runs to get to the bottom of the issues, according to The Information, which reports that the first big shipments may not go out until the first quarter.

Nvidia Blackwell GPUs allegedly delayed due to design flaws -- launch expected to be pushed back by three months or more

Microsoft, Meta, Google, and xAI will have to wait a few more months to receive their massive GPU orders. Sources from both Nvidia and Microsoft reportedly confirm that Nvidia is delaying its upcoming Blackwell AI GPUs from the expected fourth-quarter launch to potentially the first quarter of 2025. Two anonymous sources who worked on the chip itself and its server hardware first released this news, while Bloomberg allegedly corroborated it with its unnamed contact at Microsoft. The news is a surprise as Nvidia had just delivered engineering samples earlier this week, with the B100 and B200 seemingly on track for a late 2024 release. The delay means that large customers like Microsoft, Meta, and xAI -- which aims to purchase 300,000 B200 GPUs -- would likely have to wait until 2Q25 at the earliest before Nvidia could fulfill their massive orders. Meta has already doubted Nvidia's capability to deliver the Blackwell GPUs in 2024, saying it did not expect to receive shipments of Nvidia's new flagship GPU this year. The sources claimed design flaws, so it's better to delay the release of a product to work out the kinks, like AMD did with the Ryzen 9000, than to suffer a catastrophic chip failure after launch, like the instability issues that Intel is suffering with the 13th -- and 14th-generation Core processors. Getting it right the first time is crucial for Nvidia, especially as its AI Superchips cost up to $70,000 apiece, and a complete server rack costs $3,000,000 or more. With the company expecting to sell between 60,000 and 70,000 complete AI servers, it cannot afford to make a significant mistake that would cause it to lose the confidence of its customers and the lawsuits that would follow. Another reason that Nvidia can take its time to launch its next-generation GPUs is that it stands alone in the data center GPU market, having owned 98% of the market in 2023. Even if AMD manages to produce a competing AI product that performs as well as Blackwell, reaching market share parity with Nvidia will take some time. Team Green cannot rest on its laurels, though, as even its biggest customers, like Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and OpenAI, are investing in hardware research to build their own AI products in-house. It means that Nvidia must ensure that it will deliver Blackwell to customers within the expected time frame to retain its lead as one of the most valuable companies in the world.