The big picture: The pairing of TSMC's Arizona fab and Amkor's planned packaging plant nearby represents a gradual shift toward regionalized semiconductor production – one that may, over time, reduce reliance on overseas facilities for critical steps. For now, the first US-produced Blackwell GPU stands as both a milestone and a reminder of the complexity involved in rebuilding advanced manufacturing ecosystems domestically.
The first Nvidia Blackwell GPU has successfully rolled off the production line at TSMC's Fab 21 facility in Phoenix, Arizona, marking a key step toward building advanced semiconductors on American soil. The milestone represents the first time TSMC has produced a chip of this scale and complexity in the United States.
The Blackwell architecture is Nvidia's next major GPU generation, designed to power data centers and artificial intelligence workloads. Each chip is fabricated on TSMC's custom 4N process, a variant of the company's 4-nanometer technology optimized exclusively for Nvidia's designs. The new node delivers higher performance and energy efficiency, allowing Nvidia to scale its computing power for large AI models while minimizing overall chip size.
Although fabrication occurs in Arizona, full production requires packaging steps unavailable in the US. TSMC's Chip on Wafer on Substrate (CoWoS) technology – an advanced 2.5D packaging system – remains centered in Taiwan.
CoWoS combines the main GPU die with stacks of high-bandwidth memory and an interposer that links the two components at microscopic scales. For the Blackwell lineup, each GPU integrates eight stacks of HBM3E memory through CoWoS-S packaging, which connects the memory and computing die via a silicon interposer to maximize data throughput. The wafers produced in Phoenix are shipped back to TSMC's facilities in Taiwan for this critical final step.
The process illustrates both progress and dependence: while US manufacturing capacity has expanded to include leading-edge wafer production, the lack of domestic packaging infrastructure continues to constrain true end-to-end semiconductor production. Industry analysts view this as a transitional phase in rebuilding advanced chipmaking supply chains within the United States.
Efforts to close that gap are already underway. Amkor Technology, a major semiconductor packaging and testing firm, is developing a $7 billion facility in Arizona dedicated to advanced packaging and final assembly. The site – now under construction near TSMC's Fab 21 -- is planned as part of a collaboration between the two companies.
Once operational, Amkor's new campus will handle packaging for chips produced at Fab 21, effectively keeping more of the manufacturing process within the country. Production at the Amkor facility is expected to begin in early 2028, following its completion in mid-2027.