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Apple orders entire supply of TSMC's 3nm chips for iPhone 15 Pro and M3 Macs

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Re: Apple orders entire supply of TSMC's 3nm chips for iPhone 15 Pro and M3 Macs

#131

Post by nekoashide »

cubefox wrote: post #119
bookofjoe wrote: post #51

>Apple’s iPod, by comparison, was made far more pocketable thanks to the inclusion of a 1.8-inch Toshiba hard drive. The story behind how Apple came to acquire these hard drives for the original iPod is interesting. >Jobs had expressed interest in building a portable music player in late 2000 and had tasked Jon Rubinstein with making it happen. The problem, however, was that Jobs wanted a player that was small and sl…

I'm not sure how big a difference this made. If I remember correctly there were iPod alternatives with similar drives pretty quickly.

That's just it, being first to the market is sometimes more important than worrying about competitors. They killed it so hard with the ipod that even if the zune was a better device at the time people wanted the ipod.

Re: Apple orders entire supply of TSMC's 3nm chips for iPhone 15 Pro and M3 Macs

#132

Post by nordsieck »

moffkalast wrote: post #111
nordsieck wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But I genuinely believe 4k is the upper limit where you stop seeing benefits in increased resolution for a monitor. Our eyes do have limits after all! I think it depends on how big the monitor is. You're probably right for 27" monitors. But running a 43" TV as a monitor, the pixel density is quite a bit lower than I'd like.

But simultaneously you won't be looking at that giant monitor from the same distance, but much further away. So it really shouldn't make that much of a difference as long as the angular resolution checks out. I've currently got a 32" one running 1080p, from a normal viewing distance I can't see any pixels at all. Going beyond that and having to render 4x as much already seems super gratuitous. 8K is just completely r…

> But simultaneously you won't be looking at that giant monitor from the same distance

I sit 16-20 inches away from my monitor. I don't really think I sit further from this monitor than smaller monitors I've had in the past. Or a laptop on a stand.

As other people point out, I use it like multiple monitors that are seamlessly glued together with a tiling window manager (MacOS so Rectangle).

Re: Apple orders entire supply of TSMC's 3nm chips for iPhone 15 Pro and M3 Macs

#133

Post by Loveaway »

brailsafe wrote: post #95
deanc wrote: post #11

> Compared to 5nm process, the first-generation 3nm process can reduce power consumption by up to 45%, improve performance by 23% and reduce area by 16% compared to 5nm, while the second-generation 3nm process is to reduce power consumption by up to 50%, improve performance by 30% and reduce area by 35%. What kind of real-world impact are we likely to see on the 3nm chips for the new iPhone and M3 macs? These figures…

It'll help make the lightest and smallest devices even more capable than any other competing laptop. After using my work issued 16" M2 Pro, my 2019 intel mbp is crawlin slow, particularly with Docker. Build times can always be faster, battery life always better, cooling efficiency better. The real life luxury of just being able to toss a 14" macbook pro that weighs almost nothing into your bag and have a savage devel…

Similar for me, caved in and bought a M2. It's great and all, gotta say though, not entirely happy with how unbearable the 2019 intel mbp has become.

Yeah, it struggles with YouTube videos and fans are spinning in vacuum cleaner mode. But it didn't in 2019. I feel OS and software updates ruined it. Not what I expect after only about 3 years of use. (obviously it wasn't cheap either)

Oh well, still gave Apple my money, just hope it's a special situation with the chipset transition and not the regular lifespan from now on.

Re: Apple orders entire supply of TSMC's 3nm chips for iPhone 15 Pro and M3 Macs

#134

Post by edude03 »

cubefox wrote: post #119
bookofjoe wrote: post #51

>Apple’s iPod, by comparison, was made far more pocketable thanks to the inclusion of a 1.8-inch Toshiba hard drive. The story behind how Apple came to acquire these hard drives for the original iPod is interesting. >Jobs had expressed interest in building a portable music player in late 2000 and had tasked Jon Rubinstein with making it happen. The problem, however, was that Jobs wanted a player that was small and sl…

I'm not sure how big a difference this made. If I remember correctly there were iPod alternatives with similar drives pretty quickly.

The fact that we're talking about the 'iPod' & Apple and not the 'iRiver xyz' I think shows it made a big difference.

Yes, I know, survivorship bias, but apple has a history of not releases products unless they think they're good enough (for their own definition of good) and if apple hadn't had found a way to make it store enough songs to be a differentiator we probably would never have heard of the iPod, nor would we be talking about it today

Re: Apple orders entire supply of TSMC's 3nm chips for iPhone 15 Pro and M3 Macs

#135

Post by accrual »

llampx wrote: post #118
hbn wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know people have made naive comments about computers for years, "why would you ever need more than 8MB of RAM?", etc But I genuinely believe 4k is the upper limit where you stop seeing benefits in increased resolution for a monitor. Our eyes do have limits after all! I have pretty good vision and 4k is enough, and at that point I'd prefer focus on other aspects of picture quality like color accuracy and higher refr…

I think VR can definitely benefit from more pixels.

Agree. The closer the display is to the eyes, the more pixels are needed to make it convincing. I feel the tech is close though. The 2016 HTC Vive (1080 × 1200/eye) is quite pixelated, but the 2020 Index headset (1440 × 1600/eye) looks smooth and clear.

Re: Apple orders entire supply of TSMC's 3nm chips for iPhone 15 Pro and M3 Macs

#136

Post by neatze »

ChrisRR wrote: post #128
meindnoch wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the first year or so, the experience of using these 3nm machines will be unparalleled. Then after most devs switched to using M3 Macs, app performance will regress back to the baseline, making everything slow on M1/M2 machines, and basically unusable on Intel Macs. Paraphrasing the old saying: "What TSMC giveth, Electron taketh"

As an embedded developer I'm always surprised that physicists and engineers spend decades pushing the limits of physics, for software devs to come along and make text editors no faster than they were on Windows 3.1

Why it is so surprising, when delivery of product/solution in most cases prioritized over quality/efficiency to very large degree, eg. good enough delivery in 3 month is more profitable, then perfect product in year or so.

Re: Apple orders entire supply of TSMC's 3nm chips for iPhone 15 Pro and M3 Macs

#137

Post by [deleted] »

ChrisRR wrote: post #128
meindnoch wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the first year or so, the experience of using these 3nm machines will be unparalleled. Then after most devs switched to using M3 Macs, app performance will regress back to the baseline, making everything slow on M1/M2 machines, and basically unusable on Intel Macs. Paraphrasing the old saying: "What TSMC giveth, Electron taketh"

As an embedded developer I'm always surprised that physicists and engineers spend decades pushing the limits of physics, for software devs to come along and make text editors no faster than they were on Windows 3.1

[deleted]

Re: Apple orders entire supply of TSMC's 3nm chips for iPhone 15 Pro and M3 Macs

#138

Post by positr0n »

moffkalast wrote: post #111
nordsieck wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But I genuinely believe 4k is the upper limit where you stop seeing benefits in increased resolution for a monitor. Our eyes do have limits after all! I think it depends on how big the monitor is. You're probably right for 27" monitors. But running a 43" TV as a monitor, the pixel density is quite a bit lower than I'd like.

But simultaneously you won't be looking at that giant monitor from the same distance, but much further away. So it really shouldn't make that much of a difference as long as the angular resolution checks out. I've currently got a 32" one running 1080p, from a normal viewing distance I can't see any pixels at all. Going beyond that and having to render 4x as much already seems super gratuitous. 8K is just completely r…

I and several other programmers I know use a 43" monitor an arms distance away.

I run it at native resolution, like it's 4 1080p monitors glued together with no bezel.

I can definitely tell reading text is exactly like reading from a 1080p monitor compared to my retina display macbook screen right next to it.

A 43" 8k monitor for $750 or so would be an insta-buy for me.

Re: Apple orders entire supply of TSMC's 3nm chips for iPhone 15 Pro and M3 Macs

#139

Post by chrisjc »

BirAdam wrote: post #38
sylware wrote: post #3

I 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.

Every generation of shrink has pushed a company or two out of the fab business. I would guess that around 10-12 angstroms TSMC, Samsung, or Intel will cease being competitive at the leading edge and fold. Most likely that will happen one more time before the shrinking is no longer physically possible while maintaining chip function.

"When" that happens, I'm extremely curious how and if the remaining incumbents will be able to leverage their dominant positions/technology/ip/etc to establish a footing in whatever new technology supplants the existing.

I'm not really talking about whether they'll be too ignorant to recognize the impending existential risk and take action, but these companies are much more than just ASML customers that know how to use lithograph machines. They have layered stacks of mind boggling processes, expertise and experience.

Will this new technology be so revolutionary and disruptive that all their advantages are rendered obsolete insofar as competing in this new arena.

I guess if anyone could answer any of these questions they wouldn't be sitting around here talking about it on HN :)

Re: Apple orders entire supply of TSMC's 3nm chips for iPhone 15 Pro and M3 Macs

#140

Post by cubefox »

xadhominemx wrote: post #52
HarHarVeryFunny wrote: post #29

The article has no information on what this statement means. I'm sure TSMC hasn't just walked away from their other customers like NVidia and AMD. TSMC is still in process of ramping up production of their 3nm process (the article mentions they'll reach 45,000 wafers per month by March), so the only sensible reading of this statement seems to be that Apple are getting first X months (where X is unspecified) of produc…

Except for a brief period when HiSilicon was still making leading edge SOCs, Apple has been the first customer on TSMC’s new process technology, and always with a custom process flavor. This is completely normal.

That's not true? For example, I think the first TSMC 4nm chip was by Mediatek, not Apple.
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