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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

#141

Post by xiphias2 »

helf wrote: post #59
xiphias2 wrote: post #34

M2 was a skip generation for me, looking forward to M3. Maybe the same with iPhone. I generally care about process node as the main feature of a computer.

You care about the process node as a main feature? Really? I mean, it's nice and all, but the MAIN FEATURE?

Yes, as computers don't really get faster anymore, and I travel all the time (right now writing this from a hotel restaurant), the biggest change I notice is in battery time, which depends on energy efficiency improvements that usually come with process node change. I'm not being sarcastic.

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

#142

Post by coder543 »

notjustanymike wrote: post #89
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…

Interesting article, thanks for that. One of my key takeaways is the iPod represented not one but multiple simultaneous tech revolutions. Consumer storage until then unseen, paired with material and interface design that companies hadn't considered a priority.

> One of my key takeaways is the iPod represented not one but multiple simultaneous tech revolutions. Consumer storage until then unseen

I disagree entirely, for reasons that should be obvious once we examine the actual state of the market at the time. Storage was not the thing that made iPod successful.

The microdrive had existed for several years by then[0][1], developed originally for digital cameras. Like most storage technologies, it was growing in capacity as time went on. I don't think "technology gets marginally better with time" counts as a "tech revolution", nor do I think the microdrive counted as a consumer storage technology that was previously unseen by the time the iPod launched. A physically larger 1.8-inch microdrive (with consequently greater capacity) also does not count as a revolution... it's like making a bigger montor and being surprised that you have more screen real estate.

I also find the anecdote you replied to confusing because surely Apple would have known what a microdrive was before this meeting. That part of the anecdote makes no sense. IBM had their own 1GB microdrive by June of 2000, so even if Apple had exclusive rights to Toshiba's larger 1.8-inch microdrives, that seems entirely irrelevant, contrary to the "key takeaway" that the anecdote posited.

Maybe Apple would have slightly higher storage capacities, but... we're talking about a relatively marginal difference compared to the gulf in storage capacity between these microdrive MP3 players and the flash based MP3 players of the time. An advantage, but not a revolution.

As it turns out, Apple didn't even have a storage capacity advantage[2], in direct contradiction to the anecdote posted upthread.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microdrive

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oAsBiplfM9A

[2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34897209

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

#143

Post by edude03 »

Waterluvian wrote: post #4

These headlines always make it sound like the chips are fungible. Is it that they’re basically saturating the entire production capacity with their orders?

Yeah that's exactly what's happening - TSMC predicts they can make N chips per Y period, and apple has said they'd like 100% of Y period to be dedicated to making chips for Apple.

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

#144

Post by Cupprum »

zekica wrote: post #101
personjerry wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What AMD-powered computer is more energy efficient than a M1 for example?

Apple M1 Pro vs AMD 5800u - 2 months apart (October vs December 2021). 5nm vs 7nm TSMC. They have comparable performance (60-120% in multi core depending on the task, 90-110% in single core) and the same power draw.

Where did you get those numbers? According to [1] its not even the same ballpark. To me it seems that even normal m1 is a bit better [2].

[1] - https://nanoreview.net/en/cpu-compare/apple-m1-pro-vs-amd-ry...

[2] - https://nanoreview.net/en/cpu-compare/apple-m1-vs-amd-ryzen-...

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

#145

Post by meindnoch »

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

>no faster

In terms of latency it's usually slower by an order of magnitude.

There should be a law that mandates developers to use at least two generations older hardware than the average consumer.

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

#146

Post by cubefox »

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.

Physical impossibility probably won't be a factor, since, long before that, process improvements will become so expensive that they don't make economic sense. It doesn't help having a marginally more efficient chip for a much higher price.

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

#147

Post by tambourine_man »

hedora wrote: post #117
notjustanymike wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting article, thanks for that. One of my key takeaways is the iPod represented not one but multiple simultaneous tech revolutions. Consumer storage until then unseen, paired with material and interface design that companies hadn't considered a priority.

I wouldn’t read it that way. Jobs was good at noticing something would become possible 2-3 years before the rest of the industry. Flash-based players existed back then, and would have followed the trajectory the iPod jumped on a few years after it launched. The iPod interface was middling. (iTunes really, really sucked, but the device was nice) Enabling podcasts was a big deal though. I’ll give them that.

iTunes was amazing. It’s UI was so successful it guided most of the Mac’s for next decade: Coverflow and Spotlight are direct descendants.

Every major OS has Spotlight-like UI these days. You can thank iTunes for the search-as-filter paradigm.

It also did everything you’d need regarding MP3s. You could rip CDs, organize and burn them, have the lyrics and album artwork show neatly while displaying a cool set of animated waveforms…

I miss it dearly. The fact that it became a behemoth and later Apple Music was a tragedy.

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

#148

Post by IAmGraydon »

hcaz wrote: post #37
impulser_ wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TSMC is worth over 500b dollars. Apple doesn't have that amount of capital to even make an offer lol.

Apple has 100bn in available cash, they defiantly do have the capital to make an offer if they wanted

AAPL has $51B on hand, not $100B.

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

#150

Post by tarsinge »

coder543 wrote: post #142
notjustanymike wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting article, thanks for that. One of my key takeaways is the iPod represented not one but multiple simultaneous tech revolutions. Consumer storage until then unseen, paired with material and interface design that companies hadn't considered a priority.

> One of my key takeaways is the iPod represented not one but multiple simultaneous tech revolutions. Consumer storage until then unseen I disagree entirely, for reasons that should be obvious once we examine the actual state of the market at the time. Storage was not the thing that made iPod successful. The microdrive had existed for several years by then[0][1], developed originally for digital cameras. Like most st…

I didn't know about the Microdrive but Wikipedia says model larger than 1GB up to 4GB were first available in 2004, nearly 3 years after the iPod. At that time for $499 it costed you could already get a 40GB iPod.
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