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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

#281

Post by damascus »

anthomtb wrote: post #216
HarHarVeryFunny wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I forget the exact timeline, but I think part of it too was music pricing. Physical media (tapes, records) had gotten very expensive, and almost everyone was pirating MP3s from Napster etc. Apple's iTunes prices were low enough that it became simpler just to buy stuff legally than pirate it. I can't recall if iTunes was introduced at exact same time as iPod not not. Google search suggests it may have been 1 or 2 year…

>music pricing. For sure. My memory of those days is getting hazy, but IIRC CD's from top artists were going for $15-$16 in the late 90's. Maybe $12 if you were lucky. Considering inflation and that you might only want two of the twelve songs on the disk, you could easily be paying $10/song (in 2023 dollars). Big chunk of change especially for a pre-teen or teenager.

I miss what.cd. It was such a great way of discovering new music back before there were algos recommending stuff to you 24/7.

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

#282

Post by dahfizz »

tambourine_man wrote: post #188
xiphias2 wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The M-series is way faster than previous generations even in single treaded general purpose code. “Computers don’t get faster anymore” was Intel’s inability to innovate for many years, not an inevitability of physics. We will reach the end of Moore's law someday, but it’s not there yet.

Computers get faster in benchmarks. If anything, regular computer tasks like checking your email or editing a file has more latency than 5 years ago. Software bloats to fill whatever container you put it in.

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

#283

Post by ticviking »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #262
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"

> 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. This is one of those HN comments that has me feeling like I live in a different world than the commenter. What Electron apps are you using that are really that slow? I use several of the popular Electron and CEF apps on a daily basis and e…

When was the last time you used them on a $200 laptop like your cousin picked up cheap to take to college?

Or tried to help students use an electron IDE on a computer with 8Gb and a 2 ghz 10 year old processor that their dad saved to buy secondhand to help his kid not need to work overtime at the factory to keep food on the table?

Electon is only fast on developer and gamer tier hardware.

Try running this stuff on the hardware steam says is the average gamer and see how fast it actually feels.

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

#284

Post by BirAdam »

sylware wrote: post #221
BirAdam wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Allright, then an optimistic estimate of 3 times to "wrap up" the transistor skrinking with current tech. Then some dies (or chiplet) will probably grow and consume more electricity: I am thinking GPUs... if they can be fed enough data fast enough though. Look at apple Mx dies. That said, I have still no idea of the geometry of a transistor on a die to get an idea of how far we are (and I am not even talking about io…

As for true geometry, current 5nm at TSMC is actually a gate pitch (spacing between the gates) of 51nm and interconnect (smallest possible distance between the centers of adjacent wires on interconnect metal layers) of 28nm. Intel 4 is 50nm gate pitch and 30nm interconnect. So, they're between 1nm of each other. As an example, IBM did create 5nm transistors on silicon nanosheets with GAAFETs in 2017. The spacing between the transistors then had to be 41nm to mitigate quantum tunneling. In the case of TSMC and Intel, their transistors are not at the actual sizes specified, but it is currently not clear that much would be gained if they were if the pitch still had to be so long.

NOTE: I am an amateur, so please don't take any of that as actionable fact.

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

#285

Post by highwaylights »

flakeoil wrote: post #65
highwaylights wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I expect it would be more likely they’d just go straight to ASML and start building their own fabs. That said, they may see enough value in their TSMC deal that it’s simply not worth what would be an eye-watering outlay for something that in the end may not really save them all that much. It’s probably not seen as a bad thing internally that other rivals aren’t able to get on 3nm either, which wouldn’t be true if App…

> I expect it would be more likely they’d just go straight to ASML and start building their own fabs. Yeah, right. As if it is that simple. Just construct a building and put ASML machines inside and off you go.

Because clearly that’s what I just said.

> it’s simply not worth what would be an eye-watering outlay

Sigh.

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

#286

Post by nordsieck »

cassianoleal wrote: post #200
nordsieck wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I know zero people with a 8k display, I wouldn't call that a significant new feature. From what I understand, even 4k is usually a waste for a living room TV when viewed across the room from a couch. People just don't have the visual acuity to really tell the difference. But I can easily tell the difference between 4k and 8k when a 43" TV is 16" away from me. I get that companies want to make money so the new tech…

I have a 65" 4k TV and sit across the room from it. The difference from 1080p to 4k is definitely noticeable. It's not miles apart but the details are absolutely crisper and nicer. I imagine the benefits of 8k only really start showing on 80"+ screens.

That's fair.

I've seen a number of resolution charts like the one here[1]. But I suppose I forgot how different peoples' setups can be.

Sometimes across the room is 6', sometimes it's 15'. And for sure, screen size and eyesight can make a big difference.

---

1. https://www.rtings.com/tv/reviews/by-size/size-to-distance-r...

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

#287

Post by e40 »

joaogui1 wrote: post #175
Havoc wrote: post #158

At what point does this become a monopoly issue? Sure others could have outbid hypothetically so it is on paper fair but Apple has a lot of cash.

2 issues in fact, one is TSMC being the only one capable of making these amazing chips and the second is Apple buying their entire supply. Now if any of that counts as a monopoly I don't think so

And the entire yield coming from a region of the world that China has said it will annex (at some point).

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

#288

Post by ozarker »

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…

Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs is a great book if you haven’t read it.

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

#289

Post by dban »

damascus wrote: post #281
anthomtb wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>music pricing. For sure. My memory of those days is getting hazy, but IIRC CD's from top artists were going for $15-$16 in the late 90's. Maybe $12 if you were lucky. Considering inflation and that you might only want two of the twelve songs on the disk, you could easily be paying $10/song (in 2023 dollars). Big chunk of change especially for a pre-teen or teenager.

I miss what.cd. It was such a great way of discovering new music back before there were algos recommending stuff to you 24/7.

I also miss what so much

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

#290

Post by ozarker »

rcarr wrote: post #177
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"

The rust community seem to be leading the fightback on this but I think it'll be about 5 years before there's a big switch over. If I owned a popular electron app, I would definitely be thinking about starting to write a Rust version or migrating to Tauri because if you're not then somebody will be. Once that Rust version hits feature parity with your core functionality people will end up jumping ship for the faster,…

5 years sounds optimistic
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