NVIDIA's tight-lipped approach to insurance wins no battles

The Inquirer were the first to name the G84 and G86 directly, and then pointed out that others were bad too. Nvidia denied it, loudly. We said there were chipset problems, but Nvidia denied that. We said the 9x line was affected. Nvidia denied, but Apple however confirmed. Nvidia claimed it was only laptops that were affected, in an SEC filing no less. We pointed out that this wasn't the case. Nvidia still denies it.

Apple has also confirmed that, and the parts listed in the above links include, desktops. NUFI also names the exact chipset that we said was bad in our article as well. Nvidia would say we must have just gotten lucky and guessed right.

Everything we claimed and more has been confirmed, and more models have been added. We also claimed that desktop cards, and newer 55nm models were defective too, but those don't show up on the list. We guess that's just a matter of time.

Nvidia's chip design problem is a long-term one, and it takes months or years to start showing up. The technical explanation is in a three-part article; here, here and here. It may be long, but it is the only place you find an explanation. Meanwhile, Nvidia still claims it doesn't understand it.

We find this doubtful, mainly because of two things. First, Nvidia claimed to have fixed the problem in the 8-K filing mentioned above, and identified a specific fix. "All newly manufactured products and all products currently shipping in volume have a different and more robust material set." That sounds like it was pretty conclusive. The problem is that Nvidia's claim in that SEC filing just wasn't an accurate reflection of reality.

If you look at the three PCNs we were shown, written up here, here and here, they clearly show the first ship dates for the supposedly 'fixed' products as July 25, August 17 and August 17. Those dates are all after the SEC filing, and after the claim was made. Maybe there is a way to spin "first ship date", but it seems pretty clear damning, and it does not seem to align with the statement, "All products currently shipping in volume". Maybe the SEC just didn't care, or was overworked, or something more sinister.

Back to the story at hand, the insurance lawsuit. Nvidia's prognostications have been comprehensively debunked, its claims have been shown to be untrue, and it still denies the problem. It refuses to come clean, say what chips are affected, what models of computers they were in, and who they were sold to.

When we first asked it, Nvidia claimed that it wanted to protect its customers, that is, the big OEMs, so it wouldn't say a thing. The people who buy Nvidia cards? Well, that was their own problem, as Nvidia was more worried about OEM feedback than end-user harm.

This tale really starts to spin down the rabbit hole when you consider that Nvidia has been using the same line on the insurance company. According to the complaint, Nvidia has been asking NUFI to pay up, but has not provided it with any information. You really have to read this to believe it, from the suit (Page 2, lines 12-19):

"Most importantly, NVIDIA has failed and even refused to provide material information about the Chip Claims to National Union, despite repeated and specific requests by National Union for that information. Instead, NVIDIA has provided substantial information about the GPUs themselves, held meetings to discuss the GPUs, and flooded National Union with technical data. That information, however, does not contain basic information about the Chip Claims that would allow National Union to evaluate whether any settlements are reasonable, whether coverage exists for those settlements, whether other parties may be at fault, or even what precise injuries the settlements are compensating the Chip Claimants."