The burning question about the fate of Blackwell generation accelerators, which supposedly should be delayed on their way to the market due to some design flaw, was not ignored by Nvidia representatives during the publication of the quarterly report. Management emphasized that it would ship several billion dollars worth of Blackwell accelerators in the fourth quarter, but the photomask design did have to be changed to improve yield.
Image source: NVIDIA
First of all, the company’s chief financial officer, Colette Kress, said this in her explanatory note to the quarterly report: “We shipped samples of accelerators with Blackwell architecture to customers in the second quarter. We had to make changes to the GPU photomask design to improve yield. Blackwell’s production ramp-up will begin in the fourth quarter and continue through fiscal 2026.” If we consider that the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2025 ends at the end of January 2025, then Nvidia retains every chance of “earning several billion dollars in Blackwell supplies” in the corresponding period, as Colette Kress explained. At the same time, she notes that the demand for Hopper generation accelerators remains at a high level, and their supply volumes will only increase in the current fiscal half of the year.
Nvidia founder Jensen Huang also admitted that demand for Hopper remains high. He added that changes to the photomask for Blackwell chip production were made in such a way as not to affect the functionality of the chip. Functioning Blackwell samples already work in systems of a wide variety of configurations, he said. In an interview with Bloomberg, he said Blackwell samples are now being shipped around the world, and production chips will be shipped in larger quantities over time. “Blackwell’s functionality is excellent,” concluded the head of Nvidia. He also added that he expects Blackwell’s shipments to deliver impressive results from the next fiscal year, which begins in February.