During Nvidia's earnings call for the third quarter of fiscal year 2025, CEO Jensen Huang expressed gratitude to supply chain partners including TSMC and SK Hynix for their contribution to the next-generation Blackwell chips. However, Samsung Electronics (Samsung) was notably absent from this acknowledgment, sparking speculation about the availability of its HBM3E.
According to reports from South Korean media outlets including Segye Ilbo and Business Post, Huang revealed that Blackwell has entered full production status, with 13,000 samples shipped to key collaborators. He described the Blackwell system as integrating various chips and cooling solutions across data centers worldwide, characterizing the complex setup process as practically miraculous.
In his acknowledgments, Huang listed several partners involved in the Blackwell project, thanking not only TSMC but also Amphenol, Vertiv, SK Hynix, and Micron, along with Taiwanese companies KYEC, Foxconn, Quanta, Wiwynn, and major global players like Dell, HP, Supermicro, and Lenovo, demonstrating that nearly every company in the world is part of Nvidia's supply chain.
However, while both SK Hynix and Micron, responsible for producing high bandwidth memory (HBM), were mentioned, Samsung was conspicuously left out, suggesting that its HBM3E has yet to pass Nvidia's validation.
Nevertheless, industry analysts remain optimistic, believing it is only a matter of time before Samsung joins Nvidia's supply chain. According to industry sources, representatives from Samsung recently stated at a Citibank-hosted conference that progress on Nvidia's HBM validation is going smoothly, with expectations for HBM sales to double by 2025. Most technical hurdles have been overcome during Nvidia's certification process, and they anticipate that the remaining tests will conclude soon.
During its third-quarter earnings briefing held in October 2024, Samsung announced that significant progress had been made in the quality testing phase for its main customer's HBM3E.
Additionally, despite challenges in HBM supply, there are indications that Nvidia's next-generation graphics card series, GeForce RTX 50, will prioritize incorporating Samsung's GDDR7. The memory technology has a higher clock speed, with Samsung's products being the only ones to have completed safety verification, allowing them to seize market opportunities.
Industry experts note that GDDR7 offers high bandwidth and fast data transfer speeds, consuming less power and being more cost-effective than HBM, making it expected to see expanded use in the AI era. For Samsung, which has lagged in the HBM market, GDDR7 represents an important new growth driver.
