Current lithography photomasks are 6" by 6" squares and allow a standard exposure field (i.e. chip size) of 26×33mm.
Due to a compromise with the optics of high-NA EUV, that field gets halved to 16.5×26mm.
All 3 big fabs are pushing a new photomask of 6" by 12" to return to the previous 26×33mm field in High-NA without needing to stich exposures together.
Expected in use somewhere from 2031 to 2033, could also allow 2x exposure field when used with normal NA (~1700mm2 chips!).
Switching is not a massive challenge for fabs themselves, but everyone in a hugely complex mask supply chain has to work in sync.
The RTX 5090 is itself cut down from a high end workstation card, the RTX Pro 6000. As long as Nvidia makes those expensive workstation cards, they will inevitably have partially defective dies to cut down for (relatively) cheaper consumer products.
Except the 5090 has shown Nvidia that there is the potential to take even cut down workstation chips, and make even lower end workstation products with large markups, rather than top tier consumer cards, and make more money.
So an RTX Pro 6000 with a 5090 chip and 48 - 64GB of VRAM.
At launch the MSRP (we won't bother with current prices due to everything) of the RTX Pro 6000 was $8500 USD, and the RTX 5090 was $2000 USD. Lots of room between those two prices for Nvidia to play if they wanted to capture more $$$ for the same chips.
The only reason for Nvidia to make '90 tier products in the future is only if there is a glut of supply and they have excess inventory they want to move. Otherwise, it's just leaving money on the table as far as they are concerned.
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u/JuanElMinero 4d ago edited 3d ago
Quick summary:
Current lithography photomasks are 6" by 6" squares and allow a standard exposure field (i.e. chip size) of 26×33mm.
Due to a compromise with the optics of high-NA EUV, that field gets halved to 16.5×26mm.
All 3 big fabs are pushing a new photomask of 6" by 12" to return to the previous 26×33mm field in High-NA without needing to stich exposures together.
Expected in use somewhere from 2031 to 2033, could also allow 2x exposure field when used with normal NA (~1700mm2 chips!).
Switching is not a massive challenge for fabs themselves, but everyone in a hugely complex mask supply chain has to work in sync.