The Blackwell project was unusually complex, Huang said, which may have been a factor in the flaw. "In order to make a Blackwell computer work, seven different types of chips were designed from scratch and had to be ramped into production at the same time."

The technical issue stemmed from the intricate packaging technology used in the Blackwell B100 and B200 GPUs. These chips employ TSMC's CoWoS-L packaging, which utilizes an RDL interposer with local silicon interconnect bridges to achieve data transfer rates of about 10 TB/s. The problem arose from a mismatch in thermal expansion properties between various components, causing system warping and failure.