NVIDIA has encountered “design flaws” in its upcoming series of AI chips, leading to a potential delay of at least three months in their release, as reported by The Information. Customers, including Microsoft, have been informed of the delay, with large orders of the new Blackwell chips now expected to ship in early 2025 instead of this year. Google, Meta, and other major companies have collectively placed bulk orders for the Blackwell chips worth “tens of billions of dollars.” The Blackwell series chips, announced by NVIDIA in March, were supposed to offer performance boosts up to 30 times faster than its flagship H100, with potential cost and energy consumption reductions by up to 25 times. However, sources involved in the Blackwell chip development revealed that “design problems arose unusually late in the production process.” NVIDIA and its chip manufacturer, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, are currently conducting test production runs to identify and address the issues. The first significant shipments may not occur until the first quarter, according to The Information.
