Apple to occupy 90% of TSMC 3nm capacity in 2023
macrumors.comSome people may criticise the "monopoly" Apply have of TSMC latest nodes, but I think it's ultimately good. TSMC need to know they have a customer for new nodes in order to invest in them, thats what Apple are in the unique position to give with their war chest of cash. This investment by Apple eventually leads its way to other customers and smaller businesses. The whole industry thrives on the wake Apple leaves behind.
As a complete other aside, I'm excited to see what comes with the M3, particularly any neural cores. I would be much more excited about all the new AI tools if they could be run locally, Apple are again in the unique position to be able to make that possible for the masses. WWDC is hopefully going to be super interesting.
What we need is a sudden and massive increase in memory on these chips to make having LLMs viable on everyday affordable devices. I do wander if that may be something Apple surprise us with.
You would be correct if investment were the bottleneck. It's not.
The bottleneck on advanced processes is how fast ASML can build its EUV fabrication machines and they're extremely complicated pieces of kit with lots of specialized parts that are also extremely complicated pieces of kit. Even with all our modern production ability we're limited in how quickly we can assemble these machines that can actually do the lithography and everybody wants them.
ASML currently has a backlog of 100 machines. Intel, Samsung, TSMC, they all want them. They sell for $200m+ a piece. Everyone has the cash for them. ASML just can't produce them fast enough.
Why can't ASML scale? They are siting on $20B of orders. That is insane. What is ASML's delivery throughput of these machines?
My understanding is that it could, but these machines take a really long time to build. Probably a simplification, but it’s likely not unfair to say that by the time they scaled 3nm production, we’d already have moved on to 2nm, etc
Asianometry YouTube channel did a few really good videos on chip fabbing and the unique challenges. Scale is addressed IIRC. Highly recommend.
They make about 50 a year. One of the parts in these machines is a 30cm mirror that is the flattest that humans can make with our current level of technology.
If you have a way to churn them out please let Zeiss SMT know.
Do whatever they are doing now, but twice?
What in the process wouldn’t work with this method?
They can't simply choose to do the same thing twice. They might need to double the machines, facilities, and workers trained for the production of those components. Oh, wait. Not just that component, but every other specialized component of the lithography machine, and every specialized input for one of the specialized components. If there's a single one that can't ramp up production and they can't find a substitute for, there's no point in any of them doing that investment.
Presumably a lot of the machinery needed to build these components is incredibly specialized too. That machinery won't be purchasable off the shelf. It will be ordered custom with long lead times, and (again!) could have bottlenecks in production that make it simply impossible to deliver in large quantities.
I'd bet (with no supporting evidence, just a gut feeling) that this industry needs to know five years in advance what the demand for chips in a given process node is going to be just to set up the supply chains to manufacture the right number of lithography machines. If that estimate is wrong, it'll take so long to build up that infrastructure that you might as well not bother, and just try to get things right for the next node.
I got first-hand (virtual) experience with this playing Dyson Sphere. Late-game tech requires a whole web of dependencies. Doubling from 1x <shiny item> per minute to 2x <shiny item> means doubling the entire supply chain all the way down the line. It's not just doubling the factory making the thing, it's doubling the inputs, and the inputs to the inputs.
For example, the mirror might require extremely high purity silica, made in a top-notch cleanroom environment. To produce 2x, you don't just need 2x the raw material, you need 2x the air filtration systems, purifying machines, trained staff.
Which is fine, that large footprint can be doubled! But maybe this whole process is only going to be state-of-the-art for 5 years, and after that won't command top dollar.
Peak HN. Surely a casual brainstorm by a casual reader of the thread somehow unlocks all of the challenges that ASML is facing.
I figured there was something I was missing, I was asking to try to get an answer. Why won’t the naive scaling method work?
3nm.Do()
I feel like we are missing a GOTO in this one
> What in the process wouldn’t work with this method?
Testing of EUV lithography machines is very complicated and slow process. You cannot scale it without magically cloning all the test engineers and technicians.
Doing twice as much of it wouldn't scale.
Making a super-flat mirror is extremely difficult and requires state-of-the-art facilities, and state-of-the-art equipment. And highly trained, experienced employees. And there aren't enough of any of that to scale rapidly.
It's not just about scaling 1 input. You have to scale the entire supply chain.
Right, when I said “do everything twice” I was including the entire supply chain.
If there is enough money sitting on the table, it seems like it would be worth it to do that. But it sounds like it would take too long with uncertain returns?
Maybe there isn’t enough money on the table? They might be sitting on 20B of orders but maybe doubling the entire supply chain would cost a lot more? I’m sure there must be a compelling reason.
But then they’d get less money
I'm not familiar on the throughput, but their EUV lithography machines are some of the most complex machinery humanity has developed to date. We're lucky this even works, let alone dream of scaling it.
The answer is quite simple, actually. It's a hardware business so they have to right-size their equipment to projected demand and the tool-up time in specialty hardware is long because of the need for specialty components.
i.e. they need to project out demand x years in advance because their things are expensive and slow to build, and their components vendors have the same problem with the additional problem that their components vendors only have one customer for some of their products: them.
There is no other equivalent use for much of what they need so if they fuck it up they've got too much equipment too fast.
This is a classic hardware business problem.
Here's a good docu about ASML that shows some of the challenges in making these machines: https://www.vpro.nl/programmas/tegenlicht/kijk/backlight/asm...
A bit late to the party but the 100 backorders is in fact quite small if you consider they make 50 a year (as mentionned by another comment).
Even if it was possible to double the production for free in a year then without new orders when this come online you only have 50 orders left to process ...
If you look some plane production backorders are in the decade I believe atm. Looking at the A320 orders you can see how they ramp up production (and this ramp up might production line switching from aircraft type not new lines) : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Airbus_A320neo_famil...
It looks like the local-LLM enthusiasts will want to use Apple computers. This is funny to me for some reason, like if the most cost-effective work boot of 2025 is produced by Gucci.
Local LLMs do best on big GPUs, which aren’t an option on Macs.
What Apple has done with the M-series silicon is really impressive, but it’s not as fast as big, dedicated GPU silicon.
> like if the most cost-effective work boot of 2025 is produced by Gucci.
Apple M-silicon laptops are high quality, but they’re not the same as overpriced luxury goods. The price of entry level M1/M2 Macs is extremely reasonable, IMO.
> Local LLMs do best on big GPUs, which aren’t an option on Macs.
For processing speed, Ms are fast but I agree not anywhere near a top Nvdia chip.
For memory size, the memory on an M chip can be used as graphics memory, so a person could get an M2 today with 128GB of graphics memory for ~ $5k. Not bad considering an Nvidia chip approaching that memory size is several times that much.
> Local LLMs do best on big GPUs, which aren’t an option on Macs. What Apple has done with the M-series silicon is really impressive, but it’s not as fast as big, dedicated GPU silicon.
It'd be pretty silly for Apple to cram in big, dedicated GPU when 99.9% of their customers don't care and don't want to pay for it, especially considering that anyone that does want big, dedicated GPU can outboard as much GPU as they want.[1] And many seem to think that the onboard GPU along with Neural Engine should be adequate for local LLM.
Only on Intel Macs which are going away soon (only 2019 Mac Pro is remaining outside of refurbished.)
Apple Silicon doesn't currently have any provision for external graphics cards.
There are two issues.
#2 means Apple is taking nVidia and AMD head on in the GPU space. Apple wants to control everything, and allowing these competitors on their platform is giving away too much. Because Apple Silicon scales better than competitors' hw, the desire for third party GPU is probably going to evaporate within a few generations of Apple Silicon. I mean, we'll see, but that is my best guess, because it seems like that was an intentional decision rather than oversight.1) Apple Silicon won't support PCIe. 2) Apple doesn't want it to.AS supports Thunderbolt just fine. Isn't the lack of eGPU support due to lack of ARM drivers for them?
To suggest it is merely lack of drivers is an oversimplification. There is a chip errata that prevents PCIe GPUs from working properly on Apple Silicon: the architectures are not compatible. Apple Silicon GPU drivers are deeply integrated into the system. Due to this integration, only graphics cards that use the same GPU architecture as Apple Silicon could be supported, and there just aren't any, and I don't see how there could be unless Apple developed one and released it.
> To suggest it is merely lack of drivers is an oversimplification.
Not really. When you hook up an external PCI chassis with a graphics card inserted, it sees the PCI expansion slot and the GPU just fine, it just doesn't have a driver for the GPU.
Not really. Software drivers alone will not get it done, at least not adequately (Asahi-related developers may come up with a software solution for Asahi, but it will necessarily degrade performance, so the effort is likely to be abandoned).
Thunderbolt supports PCIe, and for most devices Apple Silicon does also, but GPU is different enough from audio interfaces and NVMe that it isn't just a "load the driver and plug it in" situation. GPU is vastly more complex than other PCIe devices. Apple Silicon and x86 architectures are not compatible, so GPU for x86 is not going to work with Apple Silicon with merely a software driver.
It's going to take hw translation and other technology that is not yet available for Apple Silicon, thus Apple's recent patent applications,[1] showing that Apple is either exploring supporting outboard GPU or locking anyone else out from their method of doing so, but either way is no guarantee they'll complete development or release, because it seems just as if not more likely the roadmap for Apple Silicon GPU performance will outpace nVidia and AMD GPUs.
But, again, claiming, "it just doesn't have a driver for the GPU" is a staggering oversimplification.
[1] https://image-ppubs.uspto.gov/dirsearch-public/print/downloa...
It'll be interesting to see what happens with the Mac Pro.
It could be that Apple does away with it entirely and the Mac Studio is the new Pro.
Or they might make a machine with PCIe support, but make it so expensive that only people with a serious need get access to it.
Or something else.
> It could be that Apple does away with it entirely and the Mac Studio is the new Pro.
Or the Mac Pro will be released without PCIe GPU support, and Apple will be able to leverage increases in Apple Silicon GPU performance to eliminate any need or desire for PCIe GPU, drawing away high end GPU customers from nVidia and AMD and locking them into Apple Silicon and the Apple ecosystem.
> Or the Mac Pro will be released without PCIe GPU support, and Apple will be able to leverage increases in Apple Silicon GPU performance to eliminate any need or desire for PCIe GPU, drawing away high end GPU customers from nVidia and AMD and locking them into Apple Silicon and the Apple ecosystem.
Maybe. But graphics cards aren't the only thing people put into PCIe slots.
> Maybe. But graphics cards aren't the only thing people put into PCIe slots.
Right, so there will be PCIe slots for expansion, they just won't support PCIe GPU, just like Thunderbolt PCIe expansion chassis for Thunderbolt now. It isn't the PCIe slots that break compatibility, its the difference in architecture between x86 and Apple Silicon that makes them incompatible.
they share their main memory with the GPU.
There is no cheaper way to have 50gb of memory allocated to your GPU compute pipeline (buy a 64gb macbook pro or studio). So yes big, only the fast aspect remains a reason to buy expensive dedicated gpu's
> it’s not as fast as big, dedicated GPU silicon
It's not yet. Apples combined memory architecture enables them to significantly cut the cost of bundling more memory for various GPU, Neural or other domain specific cores. I believe they will catch up or even overtake Nvidia as the leading AI platform.
Desktop AI class GPUs are hell expensive. If Apple can get something 50% as performant, but in an iPhone Pro or MacBook Air, thats going to change so very much.
It's so funny to see Apple's "combined memory architecture" praised. When Intel did this a decade+ ago with its integrated GPUs, it was roundly slated.
Well, the difference is that compared to a baseline where GPUs typically get faster RAM than CPUs, Apple is providing fast RAM to both, whereas Intel provided slow RAM to both. Of course, that’s hardly Intel’s fault given that their integrated GPUs are aimed at the low end and are usually paired with external socketed RAM.
but AI class GPUs are expensive because NVidia can pretty much ask whatever it wants as it has no competition. If Apple were to become competitive in the area, things can change.
> The price of entry level M1/M2 Macs is extremely reasonable, IMO.
Caveats: In the US, with low ram and low storage.
Without these caveats you look at about 2000€ or so (m2 macbook air with 16gb of ram and non-halved storage performance in Germany). That can still be a decent deal for what you get, but "extremely reasonable" -- not quite.
It is a little funny... but the combination of pretty good integrated graphics and (potentially) large amounts of on package ram mean that macs are actually a pretty inexpensive way to get access to a GPU with lots of graphics memory.
I wish gaming on Mac became more popular due to the same reason.
What are some broken-down reasons why gaming on Mac didn't take off. I'm sure it's a few different reasons all together
A lot of people will likely blame APIs etc, but that’s just an easy scapegoat for people outside the game dev industry.
The reality is likely just market share, hardware and the makeup of that market share.
Macs used to actually be a big gaming platform once upon a time. Myst was a Mac exclusive (built with HyperCard) and Bungie used to make games for macs first before getting bought by Microsoft.
But windows got the upper edge:
1. Much larger slice of the market
2. More of the market is made up of gaming enthusiasts than Macs which are usually either targeting light use, education or professional.
3. You can make affordable gaming PCs with windows. You can’t really do it with any kind of Mac because there’s no product for that market between the Mac Mini and iMac (which were targeted at more casual users) up to the Mac Pro and iMac Pro (which were targeted at professional users)
It’s easier to target the biggest piece of the pie and the one that will buy your products.
That’s why the “API” reason never makes sense, because iOS is THE dominant gaming platform despite having the same APIs as a mac. Game engines often need to support multiple graphics APIs anyway.
So Mac gaming did take off, but it fumbled and never recovered. Part of that is that Apple themselves fumbled as a company, on the verge of bankruptcy before the return of Jobs. What made them successful post his return is also what killed gaming on their platforms: they targeted a different audience.
You can't ignore API reasons though.
Before Metal, macOS used to ship with old OpenGL versions. I remember around the Tiger days (10.4) OpenGL was 4-5 years old compared to the version shipped in Windows. And with DirectX, Windows had a better API about two decades before Metal for macOS was released.
I do agree with your other points. Macs are expensive so they are always going to be a niche market. And in most countries, Apple products are luxury products.
Another point is really that Windows GPUs have always been more powerful. If you wanted to play the latest AAA games at good quality and fps you had to be on Windows.
And there's also an ouroboros vicious circle. Devs don't put effort into the Mac because there aren't many gamers on it, and there aren't many gamers on it because dev don't put too much effort. And it doesn't help the decisions that Apple has taken to further ostracize themselves form the desktop gaming market.
> iOS is THE dominant gaming platform
In the US. Worldwide iOS has like 28% market share I believe.
Nevertheless, Apple could really become a gaming powerhouse outside of mobile. If they released an AppleTV with a gamepad and an M3 chip, they bought or partnered with a couple of good console/desktop game studios (not mobile game studios).
The AppleTV already has games but there's not a lot of good content and Apple doesn't even provide an official gamepad. It's clear Apple doesn't care much about gaming outside of iOS.
They are making such a device. It’s called a Mac mini.
Seriously though, one hiccup for gaming in macs is the screen resolution: it’s not until recently you could get good performance at such high dpis in games, especially on a laptop. Now that gpus can push those pixels better than before, it will start being more viable to make games for macs
Also, macs are all about being premium while enabling ecosystem lock in. When they have to compete with diy desktops with hot swappable, upgradeable hardware, how can apple possibly charge such a premium for their gaming machines? How can they differentiate via software when gamers don’t care about their os — they want their os to get out of the way so they can game? Apple can’t. So they don’t even try. It would hurt their brand to be seen struggling like that
They won’t compete until they see a way to use their playbooks to gain a platform advantage. Eg, ar/vr with m3 chips
I just don’t think API matters if the capabilities are there. Look at Linux gaming, OpenGL was up to date and prevalent, but the majority of games are actually translating DirectX to Vulkan and using WINE.
Most games are using off the shelf engines that support Metal anyway, so I think api would only matter for the small subset of games using custom engines.
Regarding your point of the US, I should clarify that I didn’t mean by market share, though I suppose that’s also true in the US. I meant by profit.
According to the WSJ , Apple makes more from gaming than Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft and Activision combined worldwide.
>Look at Linux gaming
Linux is just non existent from a mainstream audience perspective, let alone the gaming market.
>Most games are using off the shelf engines that support Metal anyway, so I think api would only matter for the small subset of games using custom engines.
Today yes, it's easy to make a Mac game wit UE or Unity. But back 15-20 years ago?
BTW I'm not arguing API is the main reason Mac failed as a gaming platform. Just that it cannot be ignored.
>According to the WSJ , Apple makes more from gaming than Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft and Activision combined worldwide.
Don't me wrong, Apple is huge, but that's incorrect. Sony still makes more money than Apple.
https://www.gizmochina.com/2022/06/01/apple-rank-3rd-gaming-...
Maybe the figure you're thinking about is that iOS enabled the most consumer spending? (not the actual money Apple mades from gaming)
I’m referencing this
https://www.wsj.com/articles/apple-doesnt-make-videogames-bu...
(Non paywalled summary)
https://www.nme.com/en_au/news/gaming-news/apple-profited-mo...
Of course the WSJ may be wrong, but it’s based off of profit whereas your link seems to be revenue. Which would enable both to be true I think.
Regarding the other point of 15-20 years ago, OpenGL only started stagnating on the Mac with 4.1 in 2010. Prior to that gaming was still really missing on a Mac.
I’m also in agreement that it can’t be ignored. I just think it’s overstated.
But in general I think we’re saying the same things, and debating the nuances.
> iOS is THE dominant gaming platform despite having the same APIs as a mac
The problem with OpenGL ES AIUI (especially in the early days) is that it exposes lots of hardware specific weirdness. The reason this works for iOS is the same reason it works for Nintendo etc. Millions of devices with identical hardware.
I don't think the race is over yet, but it is really entirely up to developers, not Apple. Apple Silicon isn't quite 3yo yet, and it is hard to say right now what the gaming landscape will look like in another five years. Technically, however, though it is somewhat of a cheat, as soon as Apple released the first M1 Mac, the new platform instantly had nearly an order of magnitude more games than PC. While there are something like 50K games available through Steam, and x86 Macs only had like 7K, as soon as the M1 was released, early Apple Silicon Mac users had access to something like 450K AppStore games from iOS and iPadOS. Plus, Steam was ported to macOS, and Rosetta 2 allows many x86 PC games to run adequately in emulation (virtualized + emulation). This may not be satisfactory for hard core gamers than need massive fps, but I don't think it can be honestly claimed anymore that Macs suck for gaming. At the very least, they're competitive, and that's only going to get better, though how much better is, again, up to developers.
I don't know, but if I had to guess it would that Apple was never really interested in it or in supporting it. I fondly remember some companies (like Blizzard) who would always support Macs, until they stopped (looking at you, Diablo 4).
I think it might be a chicken/egg problem. Most Macs of don't come with hardware that's good for games. That doesn't matter though because no consumer asks for better gaming hardware in new Macs because there aren't many games. People who care about games, know they don't get it on Macs and thus have either a console or a gaming PC in addition. I play games, but generally it's just a nice surprise if I see that a Steam game supports macOS. It's so far away from being a viable primary gaming system that it's just accepted at this point.
No DirectX support.
More like no Vulkan support.
Apple had long given up on games before Vulkan was even on the drawing board.
The good thing about SW is you can always choose to change things in the future. Nothing is stopping Apple to implement support Vulkan now if they wanted to. It's not like they can't afford the engineering effort.
Windows supports both DirectX and Vulkan.
Not many games support Vulkan though.
Game devs aren't gonna bother implementing Vulkan if MacOS doesn't first support it.
The list of games that directly support Vulkan is incredibly small. As much as it gets bandied about as the solution, it’s not really used all that much without translation layers.
...and with those translation layers, you get "free" coverage of DirectX 9 up through most of 12.
So someone either rewrites DXVK to support Metal (fool's errand) or we add Yet Another Translation Layer to the mix. Something tells me the industry and users would be better off if Apple supported both Metal and Vulkan at a hardware level. Seems plausible for a company of their size.
The biggest reason is that Steve Jobs hated games. It’s well documented. John Carmack also had some words to say about graphics on Macs.
Such as?
If you care about the combination of portability, battery life, performance, and display+audio quality, then Apple’s laptops have been price competitive for quite a while now. People who think they are overpriced usually don’t care about at least one of these things.
I think it is least likely that we will run local AI instances on Apple hardware to be honest.
But yes, the comparison would be apt. I think people want to solve a problem with dependence on third party services...
No, I expect GPUs with insane amount of memory surfacing and that isn't really a field for Apple yet.
Not many laptops have 64 gb of RAM that can run llama.cpp https://gist.github.com/zitterbewegung/4787e42617aa0be6019c3...
Plenty of non-Apple laptops support 64GB RAM. For example, both the AMD and Intel variants of the Framework Laptop can take 64GB. All of of the large vendors have laptops that support a 64GB configuration too (HP, Dell, Lenovo).
Apple was cost-effective most of the time if you wanted high-quality tools.
I'm not aware of any local-LLM framework that works with Apple GPUs?
Does this qualify?[1]
[1] https://www.infoq.com/news/2023/05/mlc-llm-mobile-laptops/
Exactly. TSMC can spend tens of billions of dollars on new processes because they know Apple will be there day 1 to use it all.
The iPhone and Mac have good performance and power efficiency, but people will always want their phone and laptop to do more and get longer battery life. Apple customers’ appetite for compute is practically bottomless.
> Apple customers’ appetite for compute is practically bottomless.
I don't think so, the typical iPhone user has not scaled up their compute needs much past the 2015 A9.
And if you exclude the computational photography stuff, I could imagine some users don't take advantage of it at all.
Performance per watt is the new Moore's law - though most users don't need more power, they do appreciate longer battery lives
I think that the games on my iphone would disagree.
Genshin Impact runs on the A9, I don't think there exist any more computationally demanding games on mobile.
What games are you referring to?
I enjoy xcom 2 and civilization for example.
Those run on the A9?
No. Both of them need A10 or newer and recommends minimum a11.
Genshin also needs a A10 as minimum.
It does run on the A9: https://www.reddit.com/r/Genshin_Impact/comments/j0jzxk/the_...
With low quality graphics admittedly, where you'd get this information?
What percentage of iOS users are really hardcore gamers? I don't know, but I doubt it's even close to 25%.
It's anecdotal but I don't know of any iOS/iPadOS user that plays anything remotely demanding. Most users I know don't game. Those that do usually play casual games like Candy Crush.
It's just my (unprofessional) assumption, but besides CPU and GPU, maybe NPU (AI) still have room for improvement.
Not for compute, but for performance per watt. Raw compute is much better served by Intel/AMD + Nvidia workstation.
I enjoy the competition that Apple brings to the computing market with M* chips. As an innocent bystander in the world of AI, neural networks etc, I wonder if Apple Silicon and its neural cores would become the proprietary brake like CUDA is for ML work. That is if they do something phenomenal with the 3nm facility and bring about some hardware that only they can do..
I'd rather have a healthy competetive ecosystem where people writing software need not say stuff like "needs CUDA to work or needs Apple Neural cores to work" and instead says something like "need XYZ acceleration provided by CUDA cores, Apple Silicon, and AMD blah.."
I think it's too early for AI/ML acceleration to standardize on an API. It takes a long time to figure out what abstractions we should standardize on before we can make a universal API.
Consider the whole history of OpenGL, Metal, Vulcan, WebGL, WebGPU...
It would have been a mistake to keep using OpenGL, and WebGL was perhaps a mistake from the beginning. It was the wrong abstractions. Metal and Vulcan are clearly better abstractions for GPU APIs, and it really doesn't matter too much that Metal is Apple-only because they're close enough that you can have a good Vulcan API on top of Metal (MoltenVK). That is, what matters is that we converge on the same abstractions, and those take a long time to get right.
Now in the end we've gotten WebGPU (which isn't only for web browsers btw, can be used from native apps too) that can provide a nice universal cross-platform API.
A bit harsh to say that WebGL was a mistake from the beginning. The spec was released in 2011, along with some initial implementations. At the time, Vulkan didn't exist (2016). Not even Metal (2014) or Mantle (2013) existed yet. I don't think even the AZDO folks had done their work yet.
WebGL looked pretty damn good in 2011. It was based on OpenGL ES 2.0, which was the latest version of OpenGL ES, and the great thing about OpenGL ES is that it's a little cleaned up from OpenGL and reflects the capabilities of a broad class of graphics implementations.
What about WebGPU? The only thing that I find unsatisfactory about it is that float64 (double) is not a standard type in WebGPU and it's not supported on Apple GPUs anyway.
> TSMC need to know they have a customer for new nodes in order to invest in them
I mean, does anyone doubt that thinner process nodes will be in demand?
No, but companies still like to have preorders to pay for the investment, rather than having to empty their savings to raise cash. Apple with the cash they have thrown at TSMC and the almost certain high sales they know they will have, can make pre-emptive moves other companies will struggle to do.
How are we to proceed if we reach the size of a single atomic layer which is around 0.5nm?
Sure, 3nm is marketing too, but there are hard limits and reliability might suffer if manufacturing cannot keep up.
I suppose in some other timeline Apple funds/owns their own fab and, to the points you raise, that would be worse for everyone outside of Apple.
>Apple are in the unique position to give with their war chest of cash
Don’t all the big tech companies have giant cash accounts?
If I'm googling this right Apple had perhaps $48B in cash in 2022. I don't know how others compare.
Goog = $110B MS = $100B Amazon = $64B Meta = $37B
So no, Apple is not the big tech with the most cash. They do have a much higher market cap than the others but it's simply based on their brand image and speculation.
Apple's higher market cap is not based significantly on their image and speculation.
It's based on their consistently enormous income generation.
Apple has $114 billion in operating income over the past four quarters. Alphabet is close to $75b by comparison; Microsoft is $83b; Meta is $29b. Amazon is a joke at $12b (which is increasingly being reflected in their very mediocre stock market performance; Amazon stock has nearly contracted on an inflation adjusted basis over five years).
For large corporations like Apple, Microsoft, Meta, Alphabet, etc., profit generation is overwhelmingly what matters. Apple has led the way on that for a long time now and it's reflected in their market cap.
And revenue! i.e. 2022:
Apple: ~$395bn Microsoft: ~$200bn Amazon: ~$500bn Meta: $116bn
Revenue is a very poor reference for the context.
Amazon extracts a poor margin out of their $514 billion in sales. Over the past four quarters their operating income margin is a pathetic ~2.4%.
Apple's operating income margin is ~29.4% by comparison. They have a vastly superior business.
Eventually Amazon investors will tire of the terrible stock market returns that present Amazon is generating and the garbage that is retail and they'll demand the company split itself up. That will involve spinning off AWS so investors can realize max value for that (before it's too late and growth slows to a crawl in that space).
I look at FCF. Amazon -11B last year vs Apple +111B. Gives you an approximate run rate for their cash on hand
Apple Q2 2023 report indicates USD 166 billion in cash reserves.
I believe that's including things like high liquidity investments and so on, so not quite cash.
I am not going to bet my life on it, but as per [0] the definition of the «[cash] reserve» is: «In financial accounting, reserve always has a credit balance and can refer to a part of shareholders' equity, a liability for estimated claims, or contra-asset for uncollectible accounts».
So it refers to a credit balance, and it does not mention investments.
The term "cash reserves" is not a standard accounting term or classification. "Cash reserves" is commonly used to refer to funds set aside by a company or organization for specific purposes, such as contingencies, future investments, or working capital needs. These reserves are typically considered as part of a company's cash and cash equivalents.
Under GAAP, cash (and cash equivalents) includes currency on hand, deposits in bank accounts, and any highly liquid investments that have an original maturity of three months or less. Cash equivalents are short-term investments that are readily convertible to known amounts of cash and have original maturities of three months or less from the date of purchase
That was really helpful, thank you for the detailed explanation.
That's a slightly different thing - a reserve account is what you've correctly linked, but what people here are talking about is just a basic balance sheet categories of cash and marketable securities;
https://d18rn0p25nwr6d.cloudfront.net/CIK-0000320193/386e8c0...
So they have $25 billion in cash/cash equivalents (T-bills), $31 billion in "Current Marketable Securities" which are just those that are liquid this year so short-term debt and the like, and then $110 billion in long-term marketable securities which can be medium term bonds and other investments on a >1 year timeline.
Add those up and you get to $166 billion which is a good proxy for the amount of money they can invest today.
Thank you for the clarification. Wikipedia links both, «cash reserves» and the accounting style reserves definitions, into a single article, which I have found somewhat puzzling. A subsection in the same article outlining or expanding on the difference between the two would be beneficial.
Google $115B Microsoft $105B Samsung $91B Amazon $64B
> What we need is a sudden and massive increase in memory on these chips to make having LLMs viable on everyday affordable devices. I do wander if that may be something Apple surprise us with.
Honestly, I just wish that they'd refresh the Mac Studio. I know that probably won't happen in any processor generation which they plan to roll out the Mac Pro, though.
I don't think those criticism are valid. Apple has insane order numbers, competitors do not. It's only natural they prioritize who gives them more business.
I'm excited for the M3 too. I hope this is the generation Apple adds AV1 hardware support. If they don't, I have no confidence they will ever add support
Nobody really benefits when the leading process node is being wasted by a walled garden company on, mostly, consumer laptops
The new nodes also typically go towards iPhones and tablets as well, and in total that's only hundreds of millions of people benefitting from improved devices, so yeah pretty much nobody.
How improved though? iPhones are already pretty fast. I don't know about you, but i've never compiled a kernel on my phone. Having a faster, actual workstation grade computer would be better. But yeah you're right, sarcasm is the right approach.
Haha yes compiling a kernel should be the focus. Forget all the advancements in instant computational photography, on-device voice recognition and Siri, 4K HDR 60fps stabilized videos, 120Hz retina screens running perfectly smooth animations on an all day lasting battery, because neckbeards can't compile a kernel
Using faster computer chips to make faster computers, rather than Apple products, should be the focus, yes.
Apple's phone, tablet, laptop, and desktop products are computers. And they're making them faster, apparently. I would argue the phone is where the focus should be since that's the primary computer for many people around the world.
I think GP's point is not that apple's products aren't computers (they are of course, although Apple themselves has been positioning them less as general purpose computers and more as appliances, especially ios devices), but that it only runs/benefits apple's walled garden system. If it was open hardware it could benefit computers in general no matter what OS you run, whether embedded and tiny or huge gaming workstation.
But it is not that only Apple gets to enjoy it, Other computer system do as well. Just a year later. Or any time other competitor are willing to pay up.
Whats the difference between taking photos/videos on a phone from 2018 and cutting edge?
50% more optical zoom. Real-time image stabilization. 4x the pixels. Deep fusion/photonic engine which vastly improves image clarity due to merging multiple pictures into a final image.
There's also energy consumption.
Yep, reducing energy consumption and boosting performance per watt seems to be one of Apple’s main focuses, and for most people buying phones, tablets, and laptops that’s probably the correct choice — while raw perf is nice computers have been “fast enough” for a long time.
People who only browse the web need barely more than a Core 2 Duo, even now, and most devs and media professionals will find an M1 Pro to fill their needs somewhere between reasonably and very well. You know what almost nobody will turn down though? Laptops that are cool to the touch and rarely need to spin up fans and all manner of battery powered device that lasts longer, even doing “real” work.
Of course there will always be those who need the fastest big iron they can find and don’t care if they have to feed it 2000W and cool it a 15lb heatsink with ear piercing fans, but this group is comparatively niche.
There's a very common mindset that you only "benefit" if you have the latest, best "thing."
There are so many ways to benefit. I've never owned an Apple product in my life! And yet, I own an AMD CPU that was built on a TSMC process. I feel like that benefits me. Would that TSMC process be as good if they didn't have Apple as a customer? Maybe not. I don't know for sure - it's not something I obsess over.
It would be different if the products you could buy outside of Apple were actually bad. (And for some people who want fanless Apple Silicon, a lot of laptop alternatives are bad, but for my needs, both desktops and laptops with fans are fulfilling my needs and wants.)
I don't necessarily disagree with you, I think you're much more right than wrong, but there is a loser in it. anecdotal observation from talking to coworkers, I know several people who have switched to macs for the apple silicon because of their speed/power efficiency. That's obviously not just 3nm at play, but yes there are definite losers in this race. Also if one takes the approach that an apple user pulled in to their walled garden is a net bad for the industry at large, it's not just a short term problem but also long term as well.
Apple is giving some pretty funding guarantees TSMC. The rest of the industry will certainly benefit.
> Nobody really benefits when the leading process node is being wasted by a walled garden company on, mostly, consumer laptops
I would say consumers benefit if the leading process node is used on them, wouldn’t you?
I don’t understand the problem. The most efficient processes are always dedicated to mobile devices where the premium is worth it.
Laptops? Phones and tablets.
Yeah, definitely more of these (which is even more of a waste), I was more just thinking about myself :)
It's holding back Skynet.
Do you have any evidence whatsoever that TSMC would struggle financially without Apple?
Sounds like FUD to me.
I don't think they will be struggling, just that Apple is willing to pop up cash, or have clear commitment in advance. Businesses prefer clear and stable outlook.
So, "no".
> Some people may criticise the "monopoly" Apply have of TSMC latest nodes, but I think it's ultimately good.
And if Apple leaves TSMC will be left with the pants down.
It's astonishing how TSMC is the only company in the world that can do this. They are just so far ahead of everyone else in manufacturing. It'd sure be nice to have more capacity.
The Economist had a good article a few months ago about the volume of chip manufacture by country and process size. The takeaway is Taiwan leads < 10nm, the US and Taiwan lead 10-22nm, and that > 22nm is an interesting mix including South Korea and China.
Chart: https://www.economist.com/img/b/400/834/90/media-assets/imag...
Article: https://www.economist.com/asia/2023/02/02/americas-hoped-for...
And the company that makes the lithography machine needed for theses nodes is also a monopoly... No other company in the world can do it.
It's weird to think we're dependent on single companies for such important things.
You don't mention Samsung, is this the case of their 3nm not being actually 3nm?
https://wccftech.com/samsung-secures-3-nm-advanced-chip-orde...
I'm not an expert on the tech and can't say. Just going on what the Economist article talks about, South Korean manufacturing represents a tiny fraction of the smallest processes right now. The article you linked says the 3nm will start producing in 2024. That's good news, maybe there's competition coming.
The Samnsung 3nm will be sold in 2024, produced in 2023. I'll admit TSMC might have an edge in the timing but the OP article also hedges their statements by specifying TSMC will have limited availability of the 3nm in the second half of 2023 and the Apple product refresh in Fall 2023 might contain these 3nm components.
I just don't think Samsung is really that far behind as right now both companies are just selling promises.
Samsung's 4nm was substantially less advanced than TSMC's 4nm (compare Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 to 8+ Gen 1 when they switched to TSMC). The same is plausible for 3 nm.
> Apple has booked nearly 90% of chip supplier TSMC's first-generation 3-nanometer process capacity this year
No surprise, the N3B ("first gen") process has bad economics and poor yields. Everyone else is waiting for N3E, which is pretty different to N3B.
See: https://www.semianalysis.com/p/tsmcs-3nm-conundrum-does-it-e...
https://fuse.wikichip.org/news/7048/n3e-replaces-n3-comes-in...
Tim Cook must sweat bullets every time he reads a headline about China potentially invading Taiwan.
if China invaded Taiwan, probably we'd have 100x more problems and demand for apple hardware would dwindle
prob not his worse case scenario :)
Tim Cook has shown a pretty serious willingness to work with the CCP in the past, and their human rights track record right now is pretty bad. What makes you think either he wouldn't do so after an invasion or that China would do anything to disrupt one of the biggest prices and competitive advantages in the world (TSMC)?
The US Government would clearly engage in economic warfare, at the very least, with China if they were to invade Taiwan. Likely access to cutting edge chips would go with it... assuming China is occupying Taiwan.
Yes, this would lower QoL pretty significantly for both countries.
Isn't USA in the process of basically relocating TSMC to Arizona for that reason? And it's not for iPhones. It's because USA military can't risk having the chip supply cut off in wartime.
No. What you're missing is that the fabs moving to the US are pretty much just the ones the US military might need.
TSMC isn't moving their cutting edge production here. The fabs will be a node or two behind.
Which is why there is a lot of pressure on Intel to pull off their new EUV-2 fabs.
> relocating TSMC to Arizona
That's a big no. What's actually happening is that TSMC is building a new factory in Arizona, including training a brand new US workforce. It remains to be seen whether it can even be done. Toyota famously failed with a similar attempt in Fremont, California.
It's a question of whether TSMC is successful because of some sort of strategy that is compatible with American work culture, or do the actual Taiwanese workers play a significant part in their success? Unanswered thus far.
>It remains to be seen whether it can even be done. Toyota famously failed with a similar attempt in Fremont, California.
Every Japanese auto maker has had US plants for decades. Toyota's oldest, in Georgetown KY, has been there since 1986.
The Fremont factory predates the Georgetown factory by a few years, and of course even more if we consider the pre-Toyota history of it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NUMMI
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_Motor_Manufacturing_Ken...
TSMC is expanding into the US for that reason. Their 3nm fabs will be in Arizona (in addition to Taiwan)
Arizona won't do N3 until 2026.
TSMC said that the leading node will always be in Taiwan and N+1 will be outside.
That's incredibly smart, when world powers rely on you to deliver cutting edge hardware either directly or by proxy, you can bet they'll also have a word or two to say about any plans China might have.
So Apple wont be buying the Arizona chips since they’ll always be behind. Was Tim Cook saying all those big words in the fab opening ceremony just for show?
> But as Steve Jobs of Apple spoke, President Obama interrupted with an inquiry of his own: what would it take to make iPhones in the United States?
> Why can’t that work come home? Mr. Obama asked.
> Mr. Jobs’s reply was unambiguous. “Those jobs aren’t coming back,” he said, according to another dinner guest.
2011, https://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/22/business/apple-america-an...
I'd imagine it would be WW3 and probably a civilization breaking event, would take a long time to recover from.
Sweat bullets? You may be confusing Tim Cook with Tim Gunn.
I’d love some super smart technologist in this forum to give a realistic and practical pathway to disrupting apple in the mobile or “computer” market.
Given the fact that Apple has such a dominant position in every part of the supply chain infrastructure I’m challenged with being able to see how any organization could possibly come up with something that pushes Apple into bankruptcy.
Is this really something a technologist could take on? Apple could almost certainly copy and improve any hot new tech before it has time to seriously hurt their bottom line. They have a ton of resources...
My guess is that only another Apple could dethrone Apple. That's to say a company that produces high quality products with strong branding consistently over multiple decades. Google and Samsung are competitors but in my mind, as an Apple user, their products are not worthy quality wise of the luxury prices they demand.
How would such a company start and grow without simply being absorbed or copied by Apple or another similar oligopolist?
Being copied isn't much of an issue if the company isn't relying on features to make themselves competitive.
To grow without being acquired they would need to avoid funding from investors and be extremely disciplined. That's probably never going to happen in this space.
Huawei has been great but unlikely to be next Apple due to sanction
China invades Taiwan?
Is this legitimately the only realistic option?
Why would this affect Apple? I would think China would not want to destroy TSMC, quite the opposite they'd love to have it. They would also want to get Taiwan humming economically again as fast as possible.
Apple has been plenty happy to work with the CCP in the past, so I don't understand how/why this would bankrupt Apple or really even cause them lots of problems.
China wouldn't want to destroy TSMC. The West would rather destroy TSMC than let China have it.
If China invades, the West probably couldn't swallow Russian-style sanctions for the whole country, but it would assuredly enact sanctions related to activity in Taiwan. TSMC is not trading with China suppliers to make its chips, its trading West.
https://www.techspot.com/news/96291-taiwan-destroying-tsmc-e...
So TSMC would probably become irrelevant in due time if there were strong sanctions against China. That, and the persistent rumour that Taiwan has a plan to literally blow up the fabs if China invades gives us a picture were invading Taiwan is ideological for China, not an economic power grab.
Europe and even US still buying Russian oil through obfuscated, transshipped means as stop gap and that's a fungible commodity. Would west cut off their access to 90% of advanced nodes, where they reap most of the value add, and sustains their leading tech industries? Maybe that dependency goes down to 70% in 10 years, but maybe it's closer 100% since there's a lot of dependencies from TW industries itself.
Realistically PRC will glass most of TW defense, start a blockade and leverage continued acess to western semi to try to constrain conflict. It's not like PRC can maintain TSMC without western input. Keeping TSMC running is pretty much the only strategic goal in everyone's interest.
That has to be accounted for.
Why would you want that?
One of the hallmarks of being a hacker is a Democratic spirit. The ethos that we’re forever vigilant and deeply skeptical of structural power.
Apple has too much power, no for profit company or person can responsibly wield with that much power.
Eh... I am not worried (yet). Desktop domination is still Windows for the 30th year in a row. Windows currently is much more of a threat to open computing and has been since forever.
Is it nice to have faster ARM chips? Yeah. Does it mean that Apple has a monopoly position? Not really, they just have an edge right now, I'm sure they pay eye-watering amounts to TSMC.
Intel could compete on the lower price end, but they don't, they're instead trying to convince you that they're the fastest chips on the planet, and funnel a power plants worth of electricity through the chip to get there. But they could come back to prominence with a lower power, slower, lower price chip.
I'm not sure I understand what you mean by Democratic spirit here, a couple hours after you wrote it and i saw it.
I think it's an interesting question because the power you critique in Apple seems to be market share, and I'm misunderstanding how you think that is not the people voting their own opinions with their own money, thus canonically democratic.
I am sure I'm overlooking something you're thinking, so thought why not ask.
I appreciate the question.
Conceptually, the idea that an individual signals their support for a business by "voting with your dollars" makes logical sense. However it breaks down for a few reasons I detail below.
1. Illusion of product choice. Apple and Google are the only realistic options for 99% of smartphone users in America. You'll say look at all these other choices and point to a handful of alternative options, however unless you are in a completely different culture, or decide to join a counter-cultural movement you're going to choose a smart phone from Apple or Google because that's the culture we live in and you will be out of the loop if you do not. You might quibble that people could do something *if they only did [x, y, z]" but that's not how groups of people work and you know it. I think at this point over a TRILLION dollars has been spent convincing everyone that if you don’t have a smartphone (with blue text) then you’re not part of the real culture. Bernays proved long ago that propaganda works and it's literally the driving external motivation for our entire culture.
2. Illusion of organizational choice. But let’s say you did vote with your feet and you want to support Nokia. Great, however now all you're doing is supporting another major corporation that wants to be in the same position as Apple, but they just have different owners in a different country. Switching didn't do anything to actually diffuse power, its simply choosing a different privately owned dictatorship to align to. Apple and Google are really no different here, so choosing one over the other nets the same thing in terms of concentration of economic power.
3. Political power. The power that these companies wield in the regulatory capture game reaches far beyond any choice you may think you have or any chance you have as a small company to have an equivalent voice – if for no other reason than you can’t afford a congressman or supreme court justice. So all those "choices" you want still have to comply with whatever the corporate lobby thinks the law should say about technologies and they aren’t bashful with writing legislation. (Every government has their acquisitions system captured by major capitalist corporations)
4. Companies delegate responsibility for externalities. Recycling is a great example here. It's well known that the plastics industry has decided to "pass the decision" along to consumers by stamping their products with 1-5 recycling indicias. Problem is, most recycling systems cannot process or do not have recycling demand for anything 3-5, forcing consumers to do the work to differentiate. In fact, these same plastics companies KNOW that they are not recyclable yet intentionally do not reduce usage, meanwhile greenwashing their products to convince consumers that they are. Ok now do that for every other externality or illegal practice like slavery wages and wage theft, PFAS, CFC's, child labor etc... and there would be basically no companies in business
5. Consumers must know everything to make an actual informed choice. OK, so you say, “well I’m smart enough, I want to make a purchase that is good quality, has a net positive impact on resource use, uses pro-social labor practices and is inside my budget” in order to do this you need to spend an hour researching every supply chain and review etc… to get past the submarine articles, general marketing propaganda, obscene obfuscation of operating practices and on and on and as a result almost nobody has the time or energy. So then people look to third party review sites (all corporate sponsored) so you can’t actually trust the reviews.
The fact that people COULD do something differently is held back by the fact that most people WONT because corporations have structured everything to support the structure that supports them. In no way is this democratic because it doesn’t actually include what the alternatives could be and WE DO NOT BUILD INFRASTRUCTURE FOR ALTERNATIVES. So doing anything other than scamming people or trying to find a sucker left holding the bag (aka an EXIT opportunity/Liquidity event) is “off the beaten path.”
cool response! much appreciated
It’s a nice thought, but the reality is statements like this are just “I want google to have the power” and that’s not better
Or in the case of desktop/laptop computers, "I want Microsoft to have the power". If Apple suddenly vanished, realistically speaking most of its desktop marketshare would fall directly into Microsoft's lap as those users switched to Windows. The only exception would be devs using Linux instead, which at best represents a single digit percentage of computer users.
So in this scenario you end up with Windows being catapulted from its current ~75% global marketshare to a 90%+ virtually-unopposed monopoly, and even less reason for Microsoft to make Windows a good product.
But ... Apple isn't going to suddenly vanish. It would be a slow fade, and there's plenty of room for different things to happen. All those Mac users aren't going to be in a hurry to run to Windows. It's certainly possible Microsoft could build something attractive to them, but I think it's also quite possible that someone else could too.
But that said, even if MS did get all the market, when the concern is Apple's closed and walled-garden approach, wouldn't an MS world be better? I am certainly no fan of Windows, but it does seem much more compatible, and usable in broader ecosystems than Macs do.
> But ... Apple isn't going to suddenly vanish. It would be a slow fade, and there's plenty of room for different things to happen. All those Mac users aren't going to be in a hurry to run to Windows. It's certainly possible Microsoft could build something attractive to them, but I think it's also quite possible that someone else could too.
I think it would take quite a significant investment — as much or more than e.g. Framework has sunk into building their hardware business — to smooth the desktop Linux experience out enough to appeal to non-developer Mac users. That last "10%" that the desktop Linux is missing is hard. It'd also probably take a unprecedented level of cooperation from hardware component manufacturers to make high quality Linux drivers available for components from day one (the general consumer isn't going to want to wait somewhere between half and a full generation for robust hardware support, as is the case with the components in many prebuilt computers).
That's not impossible but it'd take a confluence of events that I don't see as particularly likely.
> …wouldn't an MS world be better? I am certainly no fan of Windows, but it does seem much more compatible, and usable in broader ecosystems than Macs do.
Compatibility and flexibility are qualities Windows has now at least in part due to meaningful competition. Make no mistake, Microsoft would love to command a walled garden of their own if they could, and in the absence of Macs they could probably boil the frog into making such a thing reality.
I’d challenge you to be more creative with possible alternatives that aren’t just doing the same thing forever.
There’s literally hundreds of ways to organize people’s labor that isn’t just private capital Vs private capital but there seems to be best few leaders that are thinking outside the box.
My preferred approach here is actually building a powerful democratic cooperative, and I’ve written a ton on this site alone on that. That seems like it’s equally as hard as trying to build a direct competitor, with the upside that it’s Democratic. Why shouldn’t we try?
The walled garden approach devalues the already-overpriced hardware they are making. If they are taking up 90% of TSMC capacity making shit I would never buy (out of hardware I would otherwise want), I am clearly missing out on the fruits of an alternative reality.
The success of capitalism to meet the demands of a consumer are entirely dependent on competition. By vertically integrating their business, Apple has made it impossible to compete.
> while Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo believes that new 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pro models coming in 2024 will feature M3 Pro and M3 Max chips.
I am really excited about the M3. The M1, with its unified memory it can already run decently large LLMs. It would be great if Apple was able to make the M3 even better at that. In addition, it seems like there is a lot of momentum in releasing models that the user can run on consumer hardware. I would love to have my own private LLMs running on my own hardware
My impression is the m3 won’t be available until next year. Although I suspect it will be in the headset, since those things are going to need a lot of power
I was planning to purchase a Macbook, but now I think it's better to wait for M3. I am impressed with the M3 specifications. It would be ideal if I could run LLM models on my computer locally.
Is there any projection on when and if Intel will catch TSMC? Seems TSMC keep managing to deliver every single planned process improvement on time.
Intel claim this should be by 2025 (once their 18A process comes on line). Obviously they could miss this target, but they say they're still on track.
They said to be on track with their 10nm node too for 8 years, how did it end?
TSMC managed to leapfrog Intel not too long ago. They still didn’t plan to adopt EUV as recently as 2017:
Not everyone is banking on EUV for 7nm, though. TSMC will extend today’s 193nm immersion and multiple patterning to 7nm, with plans to insert EUV at 5nm - [0]
Chip making is capital intensive, and a new factory that costs to the tune of $20 billions only allows a vendor to stay ahead of the competition for a few years. It’s entirely possible that Intel or Samsung will lead the race at the next technology milestone. They have work cut out for them of course. TSMC has been in the foundry business for a long time.
Given their current pace, Intel isn't catching but falling behind instead. This has been going on for quite a long time now to be honest.
None of us knows and I haven't seen any projections that Intel's gonna catch TSMC.
And this is what we call monopsony.
The market for everything other than the cutting edge is absolutely massive. 3nm is shiny and all, but it's not what most of the world runs on.
It definitely would be nice if there were more options at the cutting edge, but it's like that for good reasons and it's not likely to change.
But "3nm" is not the only manufacturing service TSMC sells. They are selling from their other lines to lots of other customers.
What's the overall annual dollar amount TSMC sells, and of that, what percentage is Apple, regardless of the specific production line?
Wasn't this already announced but at 100%? https://www.extremetech.com/computing/343291-apple-has-procu... or they are just changing their order?
The article quotes 36gb of ram for the m3 MacBook pros. Which made me wonder: why do we use power-of-2 gb ram configurations? If apple does 12/24/36, is that reasonable, or is there a reason not to?
DDR5 supports non power of 2 sized modules. You can find 48GB DDR5 modules, for example.
This could mean Qualcomm will release again something like the Snapdragon 888 and Snapdragon Gen 1, when they temporarily switched from TSMC to Samsung, with disappointing results.
Who gets the remaining 10% capacity?
Sampling for future customers.
Bitcoin miners
I bought it all
...and when M3 laptops come to market, M1 laptops (10x the performance 95% of users will need) will drop to $499, a giant shovel of dirt spread over the Wintel coffin
Given what has transpired about the Chips act for foreign manufacturers including TSMC I find it incredibly dumb and shortsighted of TSMC to hedge all their bets on Apple.
They haven't placed all their bets with Apple. Read their earnings report. They have a lot of demand. Apple is just a premier customer.
I feel this is a complete waste of leading tech: going into another slate of Apple products that do not need these advancements. I feel these slots should go to GPUs for AI and Apple is just hogging the capacity. It’d be one thing if Apple actually worked on AI softwares a bit and made it readily available to developers.
Regarding this: > It’d be one thing if Apple actually worked on AI softwares a bit and made it readily available to developers.
* Apple Silicon CPUs have a Neural Engine specifically made for fast ML-inference
* Apple supports PyTorch (https://developer.apple.com/metal/pytorch/)
* Apple has its own easily accessible machine-learning framework called Core-ML (https://developer.apple.com/machine-learning/)
So it would be inaccurate to say that they are not doing anything for the ML community.
Apple pays a premium for the privilege of using their face to test the new node for brick walls.
Sure, sometimes it means they get the newest bestest chips a year early and the fans can party, but if you're an anti-fan just remain patient and I suspect one of these years you will be the one with reason to party.
Which is my point exactly. They’re using market power to basically stymie competition. This is textbook anticompetitive behavior.
Is it? I think it’s using money, not market power.
Using market power would be threatening TSMC to shop elsewhere if they sell the same tech to others. I’ve not heard claims they do.
I also think TSMC is the one having market power there, but given that Apple pay’s a lot for them to build the tech, that may not be as large as one would think.
Investing into something better than your competitors make is competing, not anticompetitive.
I don't think this is the case. There are other semiconductor manufacturers, for example Samsung.
If the M3 doesn’t have some AI capacities that are at least somewhat utilized by something (probably bad Siri) I’ll be highly surprised.
Everyone, please let me have "Bad Siri" for the name of my next band.
I was watching a YouTube video and the guy said something like "but hey, seriously" and the audio on the computer muted and Siri appeared wondering what was going on.
So your first hit single should be about how important grass cultivation is to modern meat production: "Hay, seriously."
It’s the hardware version of the tech company “hire this smart person so they don’t go work somewhere else”
It’s anticompetitive. DoJ/FTC should be all over this. They’re using leading edge for VR. Whatever they’re rolling out next month will go down as one of their biggest failures and it will be Tim Cook’s legacy.
DoJ and FTC have no jurisdiction in Taiwan. It would be WTO if anyone
Stick that "GPUs for AI" in every new portable device for local efficient use and you have me won over though. I don't want my AI in the cloud, or on expensive desktop machines.
Apple need to make another few hundred million iPhones every year.