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Apple to occupy 90% of TSMC 3nm capacity in 2023

macrumors.com

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Re: Apple to occupy 90% of TSMC 3nm capacity in 2023

#131

Post by __alexs »

dagmx wrote: post #101
heliophobicdude wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are some broken-down reasons why gaming on Mac didn't take off. I'm sure it's a few different reasons all together

A lot of people will likely blame APIs etc, but that’s just an easy scapegoat for people outside the game dev industry. The reality is likely just market share, hardware and the makeup of that market share. Macs used to actually be a big gaming platform once upon a time. Myst was a Mac exclusive (built with HyperCard) and Bungie used to make games for macs first before getting bought by Microsoft. But windows got the…

> iOS is THE dominant gaming platform despite having the same APIs as a mac

The problem with OpenGL ES AIUI (especially in the early days) is that it exposes lots of hardware specific weirdness. The reason this works for iOS is the same reason it works for Nintendo etc. Millions of devices with identical hardware.

Re: Apple to occupy 90% of TSMC 3nm capacity in 2023

#132

Post by sammywater »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #58

I’d love some super smart technologist in this forum to give a realistic and practical pathway to disrupting apple in the mobile or “computer” market. Given the fact that Apple has such a dominant position in every part of the supply chain infrastructure I’m challenged with being able to see how any organization could possibly come up with something that pushes Apple into bankruptcy.

[dead]

Re: Apple to occupy 90% of TSMC 3nm capacity in 2023

#133

Post by ChuckNorris89 »

__alexs wrote: post #123
heliophobicdude wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are some broken-down reasons why gaming on Mac didn't take off. I'm sure it's a few different reasons all together

No DirectX support.

More like no Vulkan support.

Re: Apple to occupy 90% of TSMC 3nm capacity in 2023

#134

Post by msh »

MichaelZuo wrote: post #67
apozem wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. TSMC can spend tens of billions of dollars on new processes because they know Apple will be there day 1 to use it all. The iPhone and Mac have good performance and power efficiency, but people will always want their phone and laptop to do more and get longer battery life. Apple customers’ appetite for compute is practically bottomless.

> Apple customers’ appetite for compute is practically bottomless. I don't think so, the typical iPhone user has not scaled up their compute needs much past the 2015 A9. And if you exclude the computational photography stuff, I could imagine some users don't take advantage of it at all.

I think that the games on my iphone would disagree.

Re: Apple to occupy 90% of TSMC 3nm capacity in 2023

#136

Post by ChuckNorris89 »

__alexs wrote: post #135
ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More like no Vulkan support.

Apple had long given up on games before Vulkan was even on the drawing board.

The good thing about SW is you can always choose to change things in the future. Nothing is stopping Apple to implement support Vulkan now if they wanted to. It's not like they can't afford the engineering effort.

Windows supports both DirectX and Vulkan.

Re: Apple to occupy 90% of TSMC 3nm capacity in 2023

#137

Post by xipix »

samwillis wrote: post #65
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Local LLMs do best on big GPUs, which aren’t an option on Macs. What Apple has done with the M-series silicon is really impressive, but it’s not as fast as big, dedicated GPU silicon. > like if the most cost-effective work boot of 2025 is produced by Gucci. Apple M-silicon laptops are high quality, but they’re not the same as overpriced luxury goods. The price of entry level M1/M2 Macs is extremely reasonable, IMO.

> it’s not as fast as big, dedicated GPU silicon It's not yet . Apples combined memory architecture enables them to significantly cut the cost of bundling more memory for various GPU, Neural or other domain specific cores. I believe they will catch up or even overtake Nvidia as the leading AI platform. Desktop AI class GPUs are hell expensive. If Apple can get something 50% as performant, but in an iPhone Pro or MacB…

It's so funny to see Apple's "combined memory architecture" praised. When Intel did this a decade+ ago with its integrated GPUs, it was roundly slated.

Re: Apple to occupy 90% of TSMC 3nm capacity in 2023

#138

Post by yreg »

drexlspivey wrote: post #81
_zoltan_ wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Arizona won't do N3 until 2026. TSMC said that the leading node will always be in Taiwan and N+1 will be outside.

So Apple wont be buying the Arizona chips since they’ll always be behind. Was Tim Cook saying all those big words in the fab opening ceremony just for show?

> But as Steve Jobs of Apple spoke, President Obama interrupted with an inquiry of his own: what would it take to make iPhones in the United States?

> Why can’t that work come home? Mr. Obama asked.

> Mr. Jobs’s reply was unambiguous. “Those jobs aren’t coming back,” he said, according to another dinner guest.

2011, https://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/22/business/apple-america-an...

Re: Apple to occupy 90% of TSMC 3nm capacity in 2023

#139

Post by diffeomorphism »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #36
ftxbro wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It looks like the local-LLM enthusiasts will want to use Apple computers. This is funny to me for some reason, like if the most cost-effective work boot of 2025 is produced by Gucci.

Local LLMs do best on big GPUs, which aren’t an option on Macs. What Apple has done with the M-series silicon is really impressive, but it’s not as fast as big, dedicated GPU silicon. > like if the most cost-effective work boot of 2025 is produced by Gucci. Apple M-silicon laptops are high quality, but they’re not the same as overpriced luxury goods. The price of entry level M1/M2 Macs is extremely reasonable, IMO.

> The price of entry level M1/M2 Macs is extremely reasonable, IMO.

Caveats: In the US, with low ram and low storage.

Without these caveats you look at about 2000€ or so (m2 macbook air with 16gb of ram and non-halved storage performance in Germany). That can still be a decent deal for what you get, but "extremely reasonable" -- not quite.

Re: Apple to occupy 90% of TSMC 3nm capacity in 2023

#140

Post by Strom »

VWWHFSfQ wrote: post #21
cainxinth wrote: post #9

Tim Cook must sweat bullets every time he reads a headline about China potentially invading Taiwan.

Isn't USA in the process of basically relocating TSMC to Arizona for that reason? And it's not for iPhones. It's because USA military can't risk having the chip supply cut off in wartime.

> relocating TSMC to Arizona

That's a big no. What's actually happening is that TSMC is building a new factory in Arizona, including training a brand new US workforce. It remains to be seen whether it can even be done. Toyota famously failed with a similar attempt in Fremont, California.

It's a question of whether TSMC is successful because of some sort of strategy that is compatible with American work culture, or do the actual Taiwanese workers play a significant part in their success? Unanswered thus far.

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