Nvidia Considering AMD's Globalfoundries

Recently Expreview sat down with Jen-Hsun Huang, CEO and co-founder of Nvidia, and discussed a round of hot topics that included the company's relationship with Intel and AMD, its stance on VIA, and even its take on Larrabee, Intel's upcoming GPU with general purpose computing. But the surprising little tidbit of news stemming from the interview was the revelation that Nvidia is currently in talks with Globalfoundries, a spinoff manufacturer from Nvidia's rival, AMD/ATI.

According to Expreview, Huang previously said that Nvidia was working on three models based on 40nm. Despite this, there were reports that TSMC had problems with 40nm yields. During Computex, TSMC supposedly fixed the issue, and reported that it expects to ship GPUs based on the revised 40nm process soon. However, Expreview asked if Nvidia planned to seek another OEM similar to Globalfoundries.

"Globalfoundries is a leading silicon foundry with advanced and outstanding processing technology," Huang said in the interview. "We’re seriously evaluating and discussing about the possibilities of working with them. As to TSMC, we do regard it as a world-class silicon OEM with flexible strategies. We’re working very closely together."

Along with a possible partnership with Globalfoundries, Huang reiterated that Nvidia doesn't have plans to enter into the CPU market, nor does it have plans to acquire VIA. As for the company's loss in Q1, Huang blames the weak demand on the global economic recession. He also said that Nvidia did extremely well in Q3 2008, but when the market condition changed in Q4, Nvidia found itself over-stocked. He said that this massive amount of product--along with the recession--actually influenced Q1 2009 sales figures.

"But now, we've reduced the inventory greatly to lower the risk," he added.