NVIDIA Still Not Admitting Causes of Mobile GPU Issues

It’s no secret that NVIDIA has been facing a lot of flack in recent months with regards to their products, and to complicate things, it’s for all different reasons. Their new GPUs released this past summer failed to live up to expectations, and then it became known that mobile chips were beginning to fail in the literal sense. We’ve mentioned before in the news that NVIDIA claims they’ve taken enough steps to rectify that situation, but it’s not slowing down the rampant nailing with demands for answers.

Well, our friends at the Tech Report contacted NVIDIA and tried to get some hard answers. After two full weeks of waiting for the answers to clear the legal department, we have learned almost nothing new about the situation. NVIDIA goes on to talk about how high-lead bumps aren’t a big issue, and that known failures never have been attributed to their choice of solder, but that still doesn’t answer the question of why there are so many mobile GPUs that have been failing.

We’ve been waiting a little while for an answer, but given the reply sent to TR, it doesn’t look like we’ll receive good ones for a while. I don’t think the solder is the big issue here, at all, because given the recent mobile GPU issues… there was clearly not enough time for that factor to come into play, as it’s been quoted all over that it takes a while for that kind of issue to occur. Whatever happens, hopefully NVIDIA can get the entire debacle handled soon, so we can stop talking about it.

The choice between High Lead and Eutectic is complex. There are trade-offs in using one vs. the other, as even Mr. McLellan points out. The electromigration issues associated with printed eutectic bumps can affect long term reliability of a high current device. Electromigration is when a high current causes metal to separate over time, and creates an open circuit.