Nvidia (NVDA) says it has fixed a design flaw in its latest artificial intelligence chips that led to production and shipping delays.
The chipmaker worked with its partner, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSM), to resolve the engineering setback in its highly anticipated Blackwell AI platform.
βIt was functional, but the design flaw caused the yield to be low,β Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang said, according to Reuters. βIt was 100% Nvidiaβs fault.β
The complexity of the project contributed to the setback. The Blackwell computer involved seven new chip designs that needed to be developed and put into production simultaneously, according to Huang.
The problems first surfaced in August, when Nvidiaβs stock fell around 8% after a report that Blackwellβs production was delayed due to a design flaw, possibly setting deliveries back by three or so months and impacting major customers such as Google (GOOGL) and Microsoft (MSFT).
During the companyβs second-quarter earnings that month, Huang said Nvidia shipped samples of Blackwell to customers and that the AI platformβs production would ramp up in the fourth quarter into the next fiscal year. To βimprove production yield,β Nvidia made a change to Blackwellβs GPU mask, the chipmaker said during earnings. However, βthere were no functional changes necessary,β Huang said on a call with analysts. The company said it expects to βship several billion dollars in Blackwell revenueβ in the fourth quarter.
βWhat TSMC did, was to help us recover from that yield difficulty and resume the manufacturing of Blackwell at an incredible pace,β Huang said during an appearance in Denmark to unveil the countryβs first AI supercomputer, Gefion.
The recovery appears successful. In October, Nvidia shares got a boost after Huang said Blackwell was in full production and demand for the chip was βinsane.β
βEverybody wants to have the most, and everybody wants to be first,β Huang said during an appearance on CNBC.
Nvidia stock closed at a record high of $143.71 per share earlier this week ahead of major technology companiesβ earnings. The chipmakerβs shares were down 2.9% during Wednesday morning trading but are up around 189% so far this year.