NVIDIA teases an upcoming 7nm GPU announcement that will surprise the industry.

NVIDIA recently presented at the Credit Suisse Annual Technology Conference 2019, where the company addressed questions about its 7nm roadmap. When asked about the timeline, NVIDIA responded characteristically that it likes to surprise people with announcements. The company remains on the 12NFF node, which is a repackaged 16nm FF process from TSMC, while rival AMD has already transitioned to 7nm. The shift to a new process node has been a subject of analyst interest, particularly following Supercomputing 2019, where no clarity emerged on NVIDIA's silicon roadmap.

During the conference, a semiconductor analyst posed a direct question about NVIDIA's de-emphasis on silicon IP relative to software IP, asking when the company would provide clarity on its 7nm roadmap and how important process technology is to its overall solution for customers. The analyst's question reflected expectations that such detail would emerge at the major industry event.

In response, CFO Colette Kress emphasized NVIDIA's work across multiple markets. "We are always busy at work building our overall architectures whether that be our architectures as a whole, and it tends to serve many of our different markets, whether that be gaming, or professional visual, our overall data center," she stated. She highlighted that NVIDIA's innovations in process technology have been exceptional and promised future announcements: "We will always have something for you in the future, but we like to surprise everybody with our overall roadmaps and when things come out."

Kress stressed that software development holds equal importance to hardware advances. "For every single one of our architectures, we continue to in the development cycle, choose the existing node or also look in terms of the future node to play out, which would be better for us to go-to-market," she explained. She underscored that the platform's value extends beyond raw processing power: "The overall development of the software on top of this has allowed us both the ecosystem and the broad reach that we have both with the industries and the hyperscales."

Notably, NVIDIA indicated willingness to continue optimizing the 12NFF node, suggesting the company may remain on this process for at least one additional product launch rather than immediately transitioning to 7nm. This approach reflects the company's strategy of balancing process technology choices with architectural development and software ecosystem expansion.