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Recently, the information about the delayed delivery of Nvidia's Blackwell chip has attracted much attention.

In response to this, on August 5, Nvidia told the 21st Century Business Herald reporter: "As we have said before, demand for Hopper is very strong, sample trials of Blackwell have begun extensively, and production is expected to increase in the second half of the year. Other than that, we do not comment on rumors."

Nvidia named its chip series after its architecture. Two years ago, Nvidia launched the Hopper architecture, which helped Nvidia's business and stock price soar. This year, Nvidia launched the Blackwell architecture. Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang said at the earnings conference in May: "We are ready for the next wave of growth, and the Blackwell platform has been fully put into production."

However, some media reported that Nvidia's AI chips may be delayed by three months or more due to design defects, or affect major customers such as Meta, Google and Microsoft, which have ordered chips worth tens of billions of dollars in total.

How does the computing power supply chain affect

Since the release of NVIDIA Blackwell products, it has driven the growth of upstream and downstream industry chains. From storage, packaging technology, communication connection technology, to server assembly and computing power leasing, the capital market has also continued to set off a wave of enthusiasm.

From a global perspective, semiconductor-related suppliers of the GB200 super chip include SK Hynix, which produces HBM, TSMC, a chip foundry, ASM Pacific, a packaging equipment provider, KYEC, a chip testing company, and ASpeed, a BMC chip manufacturer; AI server hardware-related suppliers include Foxconn, Wistron, Delta, which provides power and cooling solutions, Innolight, a transceiver manufacturer, and KingSlide, a guide rail manufacturer.

Looking at the domestic market, including server suppliers Foxconn Industrial Internet and Inspur Information, copper cable suppliers Luxshare Precision, optical module supplier Zhongji Innolight, PCB manufacturers Dingpeng Holdings and Shenghong Technology, etc., have all seen significant increases.

However, after entering August, as news of delayed delivery spread, the outside world began to pay attention to whether it would affect the supply orders of companies in the industry chain. Judging from the stock market performance, many suppliers have fallen under the influence of comprehensive factors. For example, TSMC fell 5.26% on August 2, and Foxconn Industrial Internet and Shenghong Technology fell for two consecutive trading days.

On August 2, a staff member of the Securities Affairs Department of Shenghong Technology said that Shenghong Technology has noticed the information, but judging from the current production and operation of the factory, everything is operating normally. Shenghong Technology has relevant cooperation with NVIDIA, and according to the agreement, it cannot disclose specific details. In addition, many domestic suppliers have declined to comment and will not comment or respond to customer news.

Although these Nvidia concept stocks have fallen back recently, they still have different degrees of growth since the beginning of the year. As of the close of the midday market on August 5, Shenghong Technology has the largest increase since the beginning of the year, up 73.92%, Dingpeng Holdings has increased by 58.37%, Zhongji Xuchuan has increased by 42.07%, Foxconn Industrial Internet has increased by 38.82%, and Inspur Information has increased by 7.14%.

On August 4, Foxconn Industrial Internet released its 2024 semi-annual performance report, with revenue of 266.09 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 28.69%, and net profit attributable to shareholders of 8.74 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 22.04%, both of which were the highest in the same period since the company went public.

It can be seen that most supply chains have achieved growth in performance in the first half of the year. Currently, Blackwell chips are still in small-scale trials and shipments. According to previous industry estimates, they will enter large-scale mass production in the fourth quarter. Regardless of whether there is a delay, performance is expected to show more obvious changes in 2025.

How is Blackwell's shipment trend?

According to media reports, Nvidia is working with TSMC to conduct new test production to solve design problems. The report also stated that several relevant sources revealed that large-scale shipments are expected to be in the first quarter of next year. After receiving the chips, cloud vendors usually need about three months to deploy them in large clusters.

In addition to the rumors of delay, there are also reports that the US Department of Justice may launch an antitrust investigation into Nvidia, mainly involving a merger and acquisition case and Nvidia's business practices. Although Nvidia faces new challenges, its current position in the industry is still leading, far surpassing its competitors from chip platforms to ecosystems.

The market also has high expectations for its performance. Brady Wang, deputy research director of Counterpoint Research, previously predicted to a reporter from 21st Century Business Herald that Nvidia's data center revenue will exceed US$72 billion in 2024, a year-on-year increase of 134%.

The impact of the fog of delivery delays on the business will depend on the final data. However, Morgan Stanley's latest report is more optimistic. "Although some redesign is required, TSMC should still be able to catch up with Nvidia's Blackwell production time. After our research on the foundry supply chain, we believe that the production of Blackwell chips may be suspended for about two weeks, but with TSMC's efforts, this situation will be made up in the fourth quarter of 2024."

The report believes that Blackwell is making some improvements rather than delays. "The production of the original Blackwell design has started at the end of the second quarter of 2024, and any technical problems related to the original design can still be solved by the software system. Nvidia hopes to further improve the stability of Blackwell by replacing some photomasks, that is, re-spinning. The redesign of Blackwell has been completed at TSMC and will be produced in larger quantities at TSMC in the fourth quarter of 2024."

Given the strong demand for H100, Morgan Stanley believes that TSMC can temporarily allocate these idle CoWoS-L capacities to produce H100 chips within these two weeks and then catch up with Nvidia's strong demand for Blackwell production.

In addition, regarding the rumored B200A product, the report also pointed out that B200A is a product that includes a GPU (B102) and four HBM designs, suitable for customers who cannot afford NVL36 racks. "B200A meets the needs of small and medium-sized enterprise customers in the first quarter of 2025 and utilizes TSMC's CoWoS-S production capacity."

Although Morgan Stanley gave an optimistic forecast, some industry insiders believe that problems such as redesign and TSMC's CoWoS yield rate still exist, and the industry chain is still rapidly resolving them. However, as NVIDIA accelerates its iteration speed and launches products one generation per year, how to better stabilize and optimize products in the future is also a new challenge.

The delay rumors still have an impact on the stock price in the short term. At 10:00 local time on August 5, Nvidia's stock price fell by more than 6%. However, despite the recent decline in market value, Nvidia's stock price has still risen significantly, up more than 100% since the beginning of this year.