Ask HN: Can competitors catch up to Apple Silicon?

Post by modeless » Mon, Jul 04, 2022, 3:36 PM UTC

wmf wrote: post #133

modeless wrote: post #114

You're looking in the wrong place. The magic comes from TSMC, not Apple. Apple's major innovation is in using their unrivaled bank account to pay TSMC for exclusivity on their newest fabrication technology. As competitors gain access to that TSMC technology they will match or beat Apple's performance. And if Intel succeeds in reclaiming the fabrication technology lead from TSMC (we'll see) then Intel will beat Apple'…

That's not true. Compare the 8+ Gen 1 (TSMC N4) against A15 (TSMC N5).

Post by tambourine_man » Mon, Jul 04, 2022, 3:37 PM UTC

fxtentacle wrote: post #90

tambourine_man wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Software changes much faster these days. We are all dealing with high abstraction layers and legacy x86/64 and even CUDA can be replaced without much disruption in most cases. If it’s proven that Apple can consistently provide better performance per watt per dollar and have enough chips available that people can actually buy, I think they can stand a chance to gain the AI market.

"even CUDA can be replaced without much disruption in most cases" Tell that to AMD who's been missing out on the very lucrative government data-center market because they can't replace CUDA well enough. BTW, PyTorch and TensorFlow still ship without AMD support despite AMD's ROCm being around for 6 years now.

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Jul 04, 2022, 3:38 PM UTC

lumost wrote: post #142

amelius wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. And part of the magic comes from ASML.

I simply don’t believe this is true enough to matter. If it was a simple case of paying ASML X billions for their equipment, then we’d see more TSMC competitors. It is entirely plausible TSMC co-developed some of ASML’s IP and has exclusivity - or that the tech to make a working process out of ASML machines is intrinsically hard.

Post by arcticbull » Mon, Jul 04, 2022, 3:40 PM UTC

lumost wrote: post #142

amelius wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. And part of the magic comes from ASML.

I simply don’t believe this is true enough to matter. If it was a simple case of paying ASML X billions for their equipment, then we’d see more TSMC competitors. It is entirely plausible TSMC co-developed some of ASML’s IP and has exclusivity - or that the tech to make a working process out of ASML machines is intrinsically hard.

Post by UncleEntity » Mon, Jul 04, 2022, 3:44 PM UTC

emidln wrote: post #85

chrisseaton wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think if x86 get rid of their legacy instructions, they could reduce their core size Aren't those legacy instructions already emulated in microcode? I don't think they take up much physical footprint.

Yes. People bandying about "legacy x86" instructions miss this often. This isn't much different, conceptually, from Apple's Rosetta, except it's provided in microcode automatically rather than a discrete transform you need to run once and cache. This is very convenient for broad x86 backwards compatibility (e.g. I can run a Java 1.4 JVM and StarOffice or a libc.so.5 to play Unreal Tournament 2004 just fine on my 5900…