NVIDIA to use Samsung for 14nm production?

A report by Business Korea claims that despite rivalries and patent suits in the mobile market, NVIDIA is planning to use Samsung's 14nm FinFET process for the production of future chips. The news comes from Park Yu-ak, an analyst at Meritz Securities, who claims Samsung will start mass production of 14nm chips for Apple, Qualcomm and NVIDIA starting in Q2 2015.

While the article is slim on details, the article focuses primarily on mobile chips so it's likely that NVIDIA will use Samsung's 14nm process for its Tegra lineup. NVIDIA's current GPUs are made on a 28nm process by TSMC and according to the rumor mill NVIDIA may skip the 20nm node and jump straight to TSMC's 16nm FinFET process.

Park Yu-ak, an analyst at Meritz Securities, said, “Global AP makers are likely to focus on lowering the cost of production this year in order to offset a decline in AP prices.” He added, “Samsung's system semiconductor business is going to mass produce and supply chips to Apple, Qualcomm, and Nvidia starting in the second quarter of this year. As a result, the Korean tech giant is projected to exhibit stellar performance.” Market research firm Strategy Analytics estimated that Qualcomm accounted for 40 percent of the global AP market in terms of total shipments, and 50 percent in terms of sales as of last year. Apple constituted 16.0 percent of the market in 2014.