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Nvidia has produced the first Blackwell wafer on US soil

contrarian1234

Does anyone have any insight on how they make it economically viable?

US salaries are astronomically high compared to the rest of the world. In the tech sector that's doubly so. Everything is incredibly expensive there. Is this basically a small facility to keep some politicians happy?

Or is it used to provide some supply military gear at 50x the price?

Will it get shut down in a few years once everyone forgets about it?

adgjlsfhk1

semi manufacturing is highly automated, and not much of the cost is labor.

roboror

This is the culmination of years of work, not months, as the article suggests. I prefer the actual press release.

Krasnol

Meanwhile the rest of the world:

"Wow...great. Moved from one unstable part of the planet to another..."

Caius-Cosades

What other options are there for Nvidia? EU as a whole is largely non-viable due to the schizophrenic nature of EU regulations. AI development has been made de-facto illegal in EU, auto industry is being ran to the ground, so there are hardly any customers for GPU's. Now mainland China certainly would be an interesting option, but State Department would throw a shitfit.

esperent

[delayed]

echelon

This is incredible news!

I never thought this would happen, or that if it did, we'd be a few generations behind.

Now let's onshore or friendshore everything else we need! Rare earths, mid-tier processors, chemical precursors, pharmaceuticals, steel, robotics/mechatronics, solar, drones, ...

Why even stop there? Kill the Jones Act, get back to building naval drones and ships of all kinds, ...

jrk

It is a few generations behind: Blackwell is still on N4, which is an N5 variant. Meanwhile TSMC has been shipping N3 family processes in large volume products (Apple) for more than 2 years already, and is starting to ramp the next major node family (N2) for Apple et al. next year.

NVIDIA has often lagged on process, since they drive such large dies, but having the first major project demo wafer on N4 now is literally 2 generations behind Taiwan.

AlotOfReading

It's a couple process generations behind, but Blackwell is literally nvidia's most current generation. They don't ship N3 until the next generation.

When was the last time current gen, competitive GPUs were fabbed outside Asia?

contrarian1234

If only Kim Il Sung were still alive to hear you

andrewstuart

Silicon wafers should be kept clean and away from soil.

rich_sasha

Surely US soil is fine..? Best, most free and definitely most democratic soil in the world.

imdsm

I prefer mine with milk

ofrzeta

So "This is the vision of President Trump of reindustrialization" but it's been in the works for "a few short years"?

margalabargala

Well yeah, but the current administration hates the prior administration and loves having its ass kissed.

If they credited Biden, they would get their funding pulled, and possibly some ICE folks to black bag employees on their way in to let the courts sort out later.

Or they blow hot air up Trump's butt and make him feel like a big man and they get more funding without getting harrassed.

Obvious choice to make.

aiauthoritydev

Wow. This is a big deal. I had placed a bet that this will never work out and the folks on the ground thought the same too. This probably is going to be the lasting legacy of Biden administration.

CharlesW

Background: The CHIPS and Science Act, which is the key legislation behind the major incentives and on-shoring of semiconductor manufacturing in general and this achievement specifically, was signed into law by Biden on August 9, 2022.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CHIPS_and_Science_Act

meragrin_

Background: TSMC Arizona was announced in May 2020.

https://web.archive.org/web/20201020184623/https://www.anand...

dialogbox

Next step would be the king of US destroy Taiwan and owns the whole nvidia production.