Nvidia GTC 2025, the company’s biggest event of the year, started on March 17 in San Jose, CA, and ends today. On the fourth day of the event, Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, visited the Samsung Electronics booth. During his visit, he signed a Samsung GDDR7 graphics memory, writing “Samsung” and “GDDR7 Rocks!” and “RTX ON!” on the board.
If you are unaware, Samsung is the first to complete the development of GDDR7 memory chips. These chips offer a high bandwidth of 1.5TBps, which is 40% faster than the GDDR6 memory chips. NVIDIA is using GDDR7 memory chips for its GeForce RTX 50 series GPUs.
A change in Nvidia’s view on Samsung?
This is interesting because earlier this year, during CES 2025, CEO Huang commented that Samsung and SK Hynix were not involved in graphics memory. However, the next day, he corrected his statement, saying that Nvidia would use GDDR7 for its GeForce RTX 50 series from multiple partners, including Samsung. Now, Huang’s visit to the Samsung booth at GTC 2025 and his signing of the GDDR7 chip show that Samsung is indeed a key partner for Nvidia’s future graphics products.
Photo Credit: Yonhap News Agency
In addition to graphics memory, Samsung and Nvidia are also discussing high-bandwidth memory (HBM3E), though Samsung has yet to pass Nvidia’s qualification test for its 12-layer HBM3E chips. Huang recently said that the company is excited about Samsung’s participation, noting that Samsung has the ability to combine ASIC (custom chip) and memory in the base die. The Korean firm’s HBM3E chips could power Blackwell Ultra — an upgraded version of Nvidia’s Blackwell chip.
Talking about Samsung’s AI memory strategy, the company is planning to swiftly transition the AI DRAM market to HBM3E 12-die products starting as early as Q2 2025 or, at the latest, in the second half of this year. Samsung will reportedly secure qualification for its 12-layer HBM3E chip from NVIDIA between late May and early June. The Korean firm has been focusing on designing HBM3E, specifically addressing heat-related issues. It has allegedly received high praise in the post-processing review of its redesigned HBM.
