Nvidia, TSMC begin volume Blackwell production in Arizona

Nvidia and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. said they have begun volume production of Nvidia’s next‑generation Blackwell chips at TSMC’s semiconductor fabrication plant near Phoenix, Arizona, and unveiled the first U.S.‑made Blackwell wafer at a celebration this week. Nvidia Chief Executive Jensen Huang attended the event, signed the inaugural wafer and described the milestone as a significant step in onshoring advanced chip production.

TSMC’s Arizona facility is producing processors using the company’s four‑nanometer process, which is currently two generations behind its planned two‑nanometer technology. The plant began operations late last year and has already been used to manufacture Apple’s A16 Bionic processors. TSMC has said it will build two additional fabs in Arizona by the end of the decade, including one intended to run its upcoming two‑nanometer process.

Nvidia described the Blackwell architecture as introducing several technical upgrades over its previous Hopper design, including a revised Transformer Engine optimized for large language models and a Decompression Engine aimed at accelerating database queries. The architecture underpins multiple products, from...