San Francisco (AFP) – Nvidia on Monday announced plans to build top-end artificial intelligence supercomputer chips entirely in the United States for the first time. Supercomputer plants are being built in Texas in partnerships with Foxconn and Wistron, with manufacturing expected to ramp up over the course of the next 12 to 15 months, according to the Silicon Valley-based company. TSMC plants in Arizona have already started production of Nvidia’s most advanced graphics processing unit (GPU), called Blackwell, Nvidia added.
“The engines of the world’s AI infrastructure are being built in the United States for the first time,” Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang said in the blog post. “Adding American manufacturing helps us better meet the incredible and growing demand for AI chips and supercomputers, strengthens our supply chain and boosts our resiliency.”
Nvidia plans to produce as much as half a trillion dollars worth of AI infrastructure in the United States by the end of this decade through partnerships with TSMC, Foxconn, Wistron, Amkor, and SPIL. “Onshoring these industries is good for the American worker, good for the American economy, and good for American national security,” the White House said in a statement.
The US government has clamped down on the export of sophisticated AI chips to China due to national security concerns, and keeping production close to home could allow for tighter control of designs and products. Now, chips are poised to get caught up in a trade war between the US and China. On Air Force One Sunday, Trump said tariffs on semiconductors — which power any major technology from e-vehicles and iPhones to missile systems — “will be in place in the not distant future.”
“We want to make our chips and semiconductors and other things in our country,” Trump reiterated. The US president said he would announce tariffs rates for semiconductors “over the next week,” and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said they would likely be in place “in a month or two.”
© 2024 AFP
