Apple orders entire supply of TSMC's 3nm chips for iPhone 15 Pro and M3 Macs
1–10 of 467 posts
Re: Apple orders entire supply of TSMC's 3nm chips for iPhone 15 Pro and M3 Macs
#2Considering how failed was the launch of the iPhone 14 Pro (I had to wait for 45 dayss before getting mine) and sales of the "iPhone 14" (which is just an iPhone 13, basically) this is just expected
Re: Apple orders entire supply of TSMC's 3nm chips for iPhone 15 Pro and M3 Macs
#3I wonder how many transistor shrink steps we once EUV High-NA tools are in production.
Namely, before it becomes insane and too much unreliable to be reasonable.
Re: Apple orders entire supply of TSMC's 3nm chips for iPhone 15 Pro and M3 Macs
#4These headlines always make it sound like the chips are fungible.
Is it that they’re basically saturating the entire production capacity with their orders?
Re: Apple orders entire supply of TSMC's 3nm chips for iPhone 15 Pro and M3 Macs
#5I wonder how many transistor shrink steps we once EUV High-NA tools are in production. Namely, before it becomes insane and too much unreliable to be reasonable.
> Namely, before it becomes insane and too much unreliable to be reasonable.
Well, the question are the yield rates... but even low yield rate can be enough if the product can be priced expensively enough.
Re: Apple orders entire supply of TSMC's 3nm chips for iPhone 15 Pro and M3 Macs
#6These headlines always make it sound like the chips are fungible. Is it that they’re basically saturating the entire production capacity with their orders?
Yes, that is exactly what happened.
Re: Apple orders entire supply of TSMC's 3nm chips for iPhone 15 Pro and M3 Macs
#7These headlines always make it sound like the chips are fungible. Is it that they’re basically saturating the entire production capacity with their orders?
Depends on your definition of "supply". The argument is mainly just semantics. They're not wrong per-se. A better phrase might have been "production" rather than supply. I agree, supply sounds like I'm buying an off the shelf component, not a custom designed wafer.
In short, Apple is set to purchase every wafer that TSMC produces when they launch their N3 node. How long for should have, but hasn't, been specified. It's safe to assume that by "entire supply" they mean "until TSMCs next node", at which point TSMC will take orders from other companies for their N3 node.
Re: Apple orders entire supply of TSMC's 3nm chips for iPhone 15 Pro and M3 Macs
#8feel like this Intel story's related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34894943
Re: Apple orders entire supply of TSMC's 3nm chips for iPhone 15 Pro and M3 Macs
#9Why hasn't Apple just bought TSMC?
Re: Apple orders entire supply of TSMC's 3nm chips for iPhone 15 Pro and M3 Macs
#10Considering how failed was the launch of the iPhone 14 Pro (I had to wait for 45 dayss before getting mine) and sales of the "iPhone 14" (which is just an iPhone 13, basically) this is just expected
I'd put heavy quotes around "failed".
There was a general slump in the smartphone market, and Appel was the only one increasing their sales in some months.