NVIDIA’s Chip-Packaging "Mystery" Resolved

by Anton Shilov
07/08/2003 | 09:24 AM

We told you last week that there are some graphics processors from NVIDIA that are apparently packaged in Korea (see Friday's news-story). Today we have a bit more information on the topic.

In fiscal 2003 NVIDIA had four packaging partners, which are Advanced Semiconductor Engineering, Amkor Technology, ChipPAC Incorporated and Siliconware Precision Industries Company. In fiscal 2002 the company had only three partners, all of the mentioned excluding Amkor. All of those sub-contractors have packaging and testing facilities in different parts of the world, including South Korea.

Apparently, NVIDIA’s chip-packaging is produced in many different locations; everything depends on size (mm), product, type of packaging and so on. Probably a partner of NVIDIA decided to package the chips in Korea because of certain reasons it had, there is nothing strange here. Such graphics processors work and perform fully equally to their brethren packaged in Taiwan.

All current NVIDIA graphics processors’ dies are still made at TSMC, as far as we know.