Nvidia will roll out chips designed on 65-nanometer rule after co-introducing its 80nm G80 chip with foundry giant Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) in November. Nvidia said it has begun producing 65nm processors at TSMC's 300 mm wafer fabs. Industry watchers pointed out the graphics-chip supplier would begin to supply G84 and G86 chips built by TSMC with 65nm process in mid-2007.

The two companies recently co-celebrated the shipment of the 500 millionth processor designed by Nvidia and manufactured by TSMC. Nvidia has contracted TSMC, currently the world's No.1 silicon-wafer foundry, to make its chips including GeForce graphics processing units, as well as nForce media and communications processors.

Nvidia and TSMC began cooperation in 1998, when the grapics-chip supplier was developing processors on the 0.35 micron technology node.

According to Jon Peddie, GPU has become one of the largest semiconductor market segments and has made Nvidia one of the fastest-growing technology companies in history.