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When Nvidia announced in early July that it has noticed a higher than normal failure rate in some of its notebook chips, investors reacted concerned, sending the company stock down 22%. The stock recovered after Nvidia apparently demonstrated good control of the issue and a one-time charge of almost $200 million. But what seems to be a closed chapter and a black eye for the company could be a much more serious problem that is just taking off: Several industry sources confirmed to TG Daily what has been reported by some publications for some time: In contrast to Nvidia’s claims that only a limited number of GPUs are affected, sources indicated that "most" recent Nvidia GPUs carry the problem and a chance of failure, pushing the potential damage into stratospheric regions.
According to our sources, the failures are caused by a solder bump that connects the I/O termination of the silicon chip to the pad on the substrate. In Nvidia’s GPUs, this solder bump is created using high-lead. A thermal mismatch between the chip and the substrate has substantially grown in recent chip generations, apparently leading to fatigue cracking. Add into the equation a growing chip size (double the chip dimension, quadruple the stress on the bump) as well as generally hotter chips and you may have the perfect storm to take high lead beyond its limits. Apparently, problems arise at what Nvidia claims to be "extreme temperatures" and what we hear may be temperatures not too much above 70 degrees Celsius. |
Source : Toms Hardware
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