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Apple, Intel have reached preliminary chip-making deal

reuters.com

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Re: Apple, Intel have reached preliminary chip-making deal

#101

Post by LoganDark »

SoKamil wrote: post #69
LoganDark wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it ironic that Apple did the whole silicon thing to get away from Intel and now they are reportedly crawling back to Intel? I hope M6 and beyond continue to be competitive for inference.

This is about FABs and not chip designs. Imagine a parallel universe where Apple was sourcing AMD chips (they actually did for graphic cards) and then went to TSMC to whom AMD is also a customer. Intel is both at the same time, AMD and TSMC.

Note that I said M6 and beyond. I know the chip designs being produced will remain Apple's.

Other commenters in the thread talk about how Intel's node is simply inferior to TSMC's and will bottleneck the performance of the same chip designs simply by being bad. I hope that is not the case and/or that I won't have to settle for an Intel node inside my Apple chips. (They better not try to pull an AMD where some chips simply have utterly kneecapped performance for no good reason.)

Re: Apple, Intel have reached preliminary chip-making deal

#102

Post by aurareturn »

tobz1000 wrote: post #99
aurareturn wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The biggest reason to do this is because TSMC's N2 node and future nodes will be dominated by AI chips. Since AI chips have far bigger margins than most Apple chips, Apple will get outbid by companies like Nvidia, AMD, and Broadcom. Nvidia already became TSMC's biggest customer last year. Every TSMC advanced node from N5 to N2 is fully booked and running at max capacity. It's not really realistic to make Mac, Watch,…

Panther Lake's efficiency doesn't match M5, but it seems to be very good by all accounts. "Extremely disappointing" is a misrepresentation.

Scroll to the "Cinebench 2024 Single Power Efficiency" section.[0]

It doesn't even beat Lunar Lake in efficiency (made on TSMC N3B) released in 2024.

[0]https://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-Panther-Lake-Core-Ultra-...

Re: Apple, Intel have reached preliminary chip-making deal

#103

Post by twoodfin »

y3ahd0g wrote: post #100
whynotminot wrote: post #25

Big deal, smart for all parties, really. Apple standards will make Intel step up and become a better foundry partner. Apple will gain increasingly needed diversification. US supply chain gets a boost. Should be fine for TSMC in the short to medium term. Apple not going to risk actual mainline iPhone SoC on Intel any time soon, so lion share of TSMC Apple revenue will be fine.

Time will tell but with Ternus taking over, a hardware and engineering mindset, could be going for a long term learn and build together, and of Intel can get it together and go where Apple needs, later buyout Intel. Lip-Bu Tan is a year older than Tim Cook. Doubt he wants to run Intel for very long. Would be hard for me in the Ternus role to not have that in mind if Intel gets it together.

I don’t imagine Apple views fab technology as a potential differentiator worth the massive investment.

This is about diversifying their supply chain as they have done all over the place for decades. Displays, for example.

Re: Apple, Intel have reached preliminary chip-making deal

#104

Post by alwillis »

mdasen wrote: post #57
NetMageSCW wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was about x64 being unable to keep up - independent of Intel’s Fab capabilities which have improved lately. Also, the NEO line uses cutting edge technology that is necessary for the iPhone SOC, so this is probably for other chips.

> It was about x64 being unable to keep up - independent of Intel’s Fab capabilities which have improved lately. But the big reason x64 couldn't keep up was that Intel's fab capabilities were horrible. Intel got stuck and couldn't get smaller nodes out and competing fabs caught up and left Intel in the dust. Apple was able to ship 22nm Intel processors in Summer 2012 while their iPhone processors were 32nm that Fall…

>> It was about x64 being unable to keep up - independent of Intel’s fab capabilities, which have improved lately.

> But the big reason x64 couldn't keep up was that Intel's fab capabilities were horrible. Intel got stuck and couldn't get smaller nodes out, and competing fabs caught up and left Intel in the dust.

It also was that Intel couldn’t execute reliably on their own roadmap, forcing Apple at the time to do extra engineering to incorporate Intel's chips. Apple sells a lot of laptops; Intel never got their act together regarding mobile processors for MacBooks and MacBook Pros.

The 8-core Mac Pro used Intel Xeon 5500 series; at idle, it used 309 W; it used 9 fans for cooling [1]. It sounded like a jet engine when it was running. And while it was an elegant design for the time, they shouldn’t have needed to jump through these hoops.

[1]: https://support.apple.com/en-us/102839

Re: Apple, Intel have reached preliminary chip-making deal

#105

Post by 01100011 »

regexorcist wrote: post #62
01100011 wrote: post #16

> The Journal report said that the U.S. government, which became Intel's largest shareholder last year under a deal with its CEO Lip-Bu Tan, played a major role in bringing Apple to the negotiating table. Ah, so this wasn't a decision Apple freely made based on technical merits. Instead it sounds more like big government and a fancy stock manipulation scheme. My guess, Apple drags their feet for a couple years and ba…

There are many recent examples of market manipulation, but this isn't one of them. Digital sovereignty is being pushed in the EU too, and it's a good thing.

As said already, Intel isn't the only US fab now. TSMC and Samsung also have US fabs and Apple is also talking to Samsung.

Your comment is dismissive without evidence. The linked article claims there was political pressure. Do you have evidence to the contrary?

Re: Apple, Intel have reached preliminary chip-making deal

#106

Post by dyauspitr »

For what it’s worth I thought Intel was down and out and on the decline, but that is not the case 18A is more advanced and more performant than TSMC’s N2- which are both foundary’s most advanced chips. The main problem Intel has is scaling. It just cannot provide the volume right now. That seems like a much more tractable problem, especially with 14 A on the horizon.

https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/intels-18a-and-ts...

Re: Apple, Intel have reached preliminary chip-making deal

#107

Post by williadc »

aurareturn wrote: post #102
tobz1000 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Panther Lake's efficiency doesn't match M5, but it seems to be very good by all accounts. "Extremely disappointing" is a misrepresentation.

Scroll to the "Cinebench 2024 Single Power Efficiency" section.[0] It doesn't even beat Lunar Lake in efficiency (made on TSMC N3B) released in 2024. [0] https://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-Panther-Lake-Core-Ultra-...

From the article you linked:

> With the new Panther Lake mobile processors, Intel has managed to successfully combine the two previous generations, Arrow Lake and Lunar Lake, as the performance is even better than with Arrow Lake, while efficiency has been improved at the same time. Even with low power limits, the performance is very competitive, and Intel (in conjunction with the new GPUs) is therefore the better choice for slim laptops.

Re: Apple, Intel have reached preliminary chip-making deal

#108

Post by aurareturn »

Melatonic wrote: post #66
GeekyBear wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the third year in a row that Apple's most advanced chips have used a version of TSMC's 3nm node, with a transition to a more advanced node due in the next generation. Intel would only need to be on par with TSMC's older 3nm node to Fab Apple's entry level SOCs.

Intel just bought a ton of ASML's most advanced machines (way more than TSMC) so theoretically they should be able to manufacture stuff on an equivalent node or better. And given the kind of performance and battery life we have seen from their latest chips they definitely seem to be back in the game

Do you have a source of how many total EUV machines Intel bought and TSMC bought in the last 1-2 years?

Yes, Intel made the first purchase for High NA EUV machines. That's largely because they were so far behind TSMC, they took a big risk as the first adopter for High NA EUV with their upcoming 14A node to try to catch up.

TSMC thinks it can keep using low NA EUV machines for N2 and A14 nodes even if they have to increase the number of patterning steps. This also means TSMC will likely keep all the AI chip design wins since High NA has half of the reticle size of low NA. The maximum chip size of High NA is half of low NA. This is a major deal for AI chips because they tend to want to be as big as possible.

None of these things mean Intel bought more total EUV machines than TSMC. A quick internet search says TSMC has about 2x as many fabs in active construction as Intel.

Re: Apple, Intel have reached preliminary chip-making deal

#109

Post by aurareturn »

Melatonic wrote: post #66
GeekyBear wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the third year in a row that Apple's most advanced chips have used a version of TSMC's 3nm node, with a transition to a more advanced node due in the next generation. Intel would only need to be on par with TSMC's older 3nm node to Fab Apple's entry level SOCs.

Intel just bought a ton of ASML's most advanced machines (way more than TSMC) so theoretically they should be able to manufacture stuff on an equivalent node or better. And given the kind of performance and battery life we have seen from their latest chips they definitely seem to be back in the game

  And given the kind of performance and battery life we have seen from their latest chips they definitely seem to be back in the game
Panther Lake on 18A is less efficiency than Lunar Lake on N3B released in 2024.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-Panther-Lake-Core-Ultra-...

Re: Apple, Intel have reached preliminary chip-making deal

#110

Post by aurareturn »

williadc wrote: post #107
aurareturn wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Scroll to the "Cinebench 2024 Single Power Efficiency" section.[0] It doesn't even beat Lunar Lake in efficiency (made on TSMC N3B) released in 2024. [0] https://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-Panther-Lake-Core-Ultra-...

From the article you linked: > With the new Panther Lake mobile processors, Intel has managed to successfully combine the two previous generations, Arrow Lake and Lunar Lake, as the performance is even better than with Arrow Lake, while efficiency has been improved at the same time. Even with low power limits, the performance is very competitive, and Intel (in conjunction with the new GPUs) is therefore the better ch…

Notice how it doesn't say it's more efficient than Lunar Lake.

Their benchmarks say LNL is more efficient.

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