Nvidia reportedly delays its next AI chip due to design flaw

Nvidia has reportedly told Microsoft and at least one other cloud provider that its “Blackwell” B200 AI chips will take at least three months longer to produce than planned, according to The information. The delay is the result of a design flaw discovered “exceptionally late in the production process,” according to two unnamed sources, including a Microsoft employee, cited by the outlet..

The B200 chips are the follow-up to the extremely popular and hard-to-get H100 chips, which power vast swaths of the artificial intelligence cloud landscape (and have helped make Nvidia one of the most valuable companies in the world). Nvidia expects production of the chip to “ramp up within 2 hours,” according to a statement Nvidia spokesperson John Rizzo shared with On the edge. “Furthermore, we do not comment on rumors.”

Nvidia is now working on a new test suite with chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, and won’t ship a large number of Blackwell chips until the first quarter. The information writes that Microsoft, Google and Meta have ordered chips worth “tens of billions of dollars.”

The report arrives a few months later Nvidia said that “Blackwell-based products will be available from partners” starting in 2024. The new chips are expected to kick off a new annual cadence of AI chips from the company, as several other technology companies, such as AMD, work to develop its own AI chip competitors.