Supply Chain

NVIDIA's supply chain is an important part of our efforts to reduce the company's environmental impact. We use subcontractors to manufacture our products and work closely with them to improve their social and environmental performance, as well as comply with international guidelines for responsible practices and material safety.

2012 UPDATE

In compliance with the Dodd Frank Act 1502 related to conflict minerals, NVIDIA has adopted a conflict minerals statement which you can access here.

Silicon (Chip) Operations

Our Silicon Chip Operations division is responsible for designing NVIDIA GPUs. We work closely with our manufacturing partners to track environmental metrics related to the manufacture of our products and to address workplace conditions.

Compliance

Silicon Operations suppliers comply with several governmental initiatives and each is ISO 14001 certified. See panel at left of the page for the full list.

NVIDIA Silicon Chip Operations is in full compliance with European Union RoHS and REACH regulations. We have committed through the JEDEC initiative to create new products that are free of halogenated flame retardants. We will continue to be vigilant and responsive to changes in the regulatory landscape that require reducing or eliminating hazardous materials in our products.

We have tested our finished products at ISO 17025-certified laboratories for RoHS substances and halogens to demonstrate our compliance. We have also requested our suppliers provide certified lab test results for homogeneous raw materials yearly to demonstrate full environmental compliance.

Beyond Compliance

Carbon Disclosure Project – We improved our Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) rating from 34 in 2009 to 56 in 2010. In 2011, we stayed relatively equal with a score of 54. To improve our rating in 2012, we will work with PricewaterhouseCoopers to verify our Scope 1 and Scope 2 greenhouse gas data. We have also engaged an environmental consultant to help us better evaluate and respond to risks and opportunities identified in the CDP.

Electronics Industry Citizenship Coalition – NVIDIA Silicon Operations joined the Electronics Industry Citizenship Coalition (EICC) in 2007. Since then, we have leveraged our membership as an opportunity to raise awareness among our critical manufacturing suppliers and to improve factory conditions in the areas of ethics, labor and working hours, environment, health and safety, and management systems. We integrate EICC training into our quarterly business reviews with our suppliers.

NVIDIA's global citizenship directive and the EICC Code of Conduct guide us in addressing factory working conditions in our supply chain. We believe that, through our participation in collaborative industry initiatives such as the EICC, we can have a greater positive impact on our supply chain.

NVIDIA is also helping to develop the EICC Water Use survey for establishing a baseline for water use by our suppliers. We are requesting suppliers to continue their participation in the EICC's Carbon Reporting System.

Conflict Minerals – The EICC Smelter Auditing Program has been developed by the EICC to help members ensure they are using conflict-free minerals. (As defined by the Dodd-Frank Act, Section 1502, conflict minerals include tantalum, tin, tungsten and gold from the Democratic Republic of Congo.) NVIDIA has already taken action to request that all our direct suppliers report the name and location of mines and smelters to confirm that they are not sourcing minerals from conflict regions of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Through the EICC, NVIDIA has collected initial information from 100 percent of our smelter suppliers. The smelters will then be on the EICC list of smelters to be audited. The majority of smelters for these metals have voluntarily joined this program.

Excessive Working Hours – In cooperation with the EICC Validated Audit Program, we requested that an independent third-party audit our suppliers on the treatment of their workers in their factories, plants or facilities. By Q1 2012, 90 percent of our key manufacturing suppliers for Silicon Operations have been audited. Any issues found are classified as either major or minor, and NVIDIA works with each supplier to correct major issues as soon as possible. NVIDIA meets with each supplier to discuss the audit findings and will initiate a corrective action plan to prevent or correct any mistreatment of workers if necessary. Any new key suppliers from acquisitions will be evaluated to determine if a Validated Audit Program will be required.

Hazardous Waste – We have engaged our key Silicon Chip Operations suppliers to provide information about how they are disposing of the hazardous waste material generated at their facilities. We are sharing knowledge with our suppliers in Asia on the lessons learned from Superfund sites of electronics companies in the U.S.

Water – We have requested our key Silicon Chip Operations suppliers to disclose the amount of water used in their facilities, how much water they are treating internally and recycling, and the quality of their treated wastewater prior to discharge from their facilities. We are also encouraging our suppliers to share best-known methods with each other on how to better equip the infrastructure of their facilities to improve treatment and maximize recycling of process wastewater.

Carbon Footprint – We have requested all Silicon Chip Operations suppliers to participate in the Carbon Disclosure Project or the EICC's Carbon Reporting System to quantify the amount of carbon released from their facilities over the past year. The Scope 1 and Scope 2 data they provide will enable us to report on the carbon footprint of our suppliers and help generate ideas as to how they can reduce or eliminate their carbon emissions. We have not committed to a date at which we'll report our suppliers' emissions as our Scope 3 emissions.

Board Operations

NVIDIA's Board Operations group designs the printed circuit boards (PCBs) that house electronic components in computers and other devices. Like our Silicon Chip Operations, our Board Operations group is fabless, using subcontractors to do the manufacturing. Both groups work closely with approved vendors to follow international guidelines related to responsible practices and material safety.

We are committed to reducing hazardous materials in our PCBs and complying with international guidelines. Starting in 2010, NVIDIA's Board Operations suppliers stopped using halogenated parts in all new products. This effectively eliminated Polyvinyl Chloride (PVC) and Brominated Flame Retardants (BFRs), which were used previously in PCBs and other components. As part of our overall operations, we document all requirements related to hazardous substances made by law, despite the fact that 99.9 percent have no application in our products.

NVIDIA is ISO14001 certified and we require all of our suppliers to be certified, as well.

NVIDIA's Manufacturer Environmental Compliance specification MECS0001 includes:

• Applicable Laws & Directives:
• EU RoHS Directive 2002/95/EC (including the 1 July 2011 revision)
• CSCL, JIG, REACH and Other Regulated Substances
• Restricted Substances In Packaging
• Restricted Substances In Batteries
• Adopted Industry Environmental Standards:
• PVC Free Products
• Halogen Free Products
• Substances of Concern
• Industry Standards & Safety Agencies
• Product Specific Requirements

Because we have so many suppliers, managing compliance is critical. We use Manufacturer Component Approval Questionnaires for all Board Operations suppliers. In addition, we have specific agreements for environmental compliance with specialized suppliers.

While we do not track water, waste and energy metrics of our suppliers, our PCB fabricators and contract manufacturers do communicate the efforts they undertake to reduce energy, reclaim and reuse water, and recycle materials in their manufacturing process.

To help our largest suppliers comply with RoHS, we've paid for handheld material analyzers that screen for hazardous substances.

We've also developed a Material Content Declaration program to aid in the disposition of items in NVIDIA's parts database. The program covers information such as:

• Manufacturer environmental compliance
• Legacy/history of compliance
• Disclosure of application-specific use of RoHS substances under RoHS annex exemptions and effective expirations
• Use or non-use of conflict minerals from the Democratic Republic of Congo