191–200 of 225 posts
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Doing twice as much of it wouldn't scale. Making a super-flat mirror is extremely difficult and requires state-of-the-art facilities, and state-of-the-art equipment. And highly trained, experienced employees. And there aren't enough of any of that to scale rapidly. It's not just about scaling 1 input. You have to scale the entire supply chain.
Right, when I said “do everything twice” I was including the entire supply chain. If there is enough money sitting on the table, it seems like it would be worth it to do that. But it sounds like it would take too long with uncertain returns?
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AS supports Thunderbolt just fine. Isn't the lack of eGPU support due to lack of ARM drivers for them?
To suggest it is merely lack of drivers is an oversimplification. There is a chip errata that prevents PCIe GPUs from working properly on Apple Silicon: the architectures are not compatible. Apple Silicon GPU drivers are deeply integrated into the system. Due to this integration, only graphics cards that use the same GPU architecture as Apple Silicon could be supported, and there just aren't any, and I don't see how…
Not really. When you hook up an external PCI chassis with a graphics card inserted, it sees the PCI expansion slot and the GPU just fine, it just doesn't have a driver for the GPU.
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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
The biggest reason is that Steve Jobs hated games. It’s well documented. John Carmack also had some words to say about graphics on Macs.
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Is this really something a technologist could take on? Apple could almost certainly copy and improve any hot new tech before it has time to seriously hurt their bottom line. They have a ton of resources... My guess is that only another Apple could dethrone Apple. That's to say a company that produces high quality products with strong branding consistently over multiple decades. Google and Samsung are competitors but…
How would such a company start and grow without simply being absorbed or copied by Apple or another similar oligopolist?
To grow without being acquired they would need to avoid funding from investors and be extremely disciplined. That's probably never going to happen in this space.
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Why would you want that?
One of the hallmarks of being a hacker is a Democratic spirit. The ethos that we’re forever vigilant and deeply skeptical of structural power. Apple has too much power, no for profit company or person can responsibly wield with that much power.
I think it's an interesting question because the power you critique in Apple seems to be market share, and I'm misunderstanding how you think that is not the people voting their own opinions with their own money, thus canonically democratic.
I am sure I'm overlooking something you're thinking, so thought why not ask.
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Why would this affect Apple? I would think China would not want to destroy TSMC, quite the opposite they'd love to have it. They would also want to get Taiwan humming economically again as fast as possible. Apple has been plenty happy to work with the CCP in the past, so I don't understand how/why this would bankrupt Apple or really even cause them lots of problems.
China wouldn't want to destroy TSMC. The West would rather destroy TSMC than let China have it.
Realistically PRC will glass most of TW defense, start a blockade and leverage continued acess to western semi to try to constrain conflict. It's not like PRC can maintain TSMC without western input. Keeping TSMC running is pretty much the only strategic goal in everyone's interest.
Is there any projection on when and if Intel will catch TSMC? Seems TSMC keep managing to deliver every single planned process improvement on time.
Not everyone is banking on EUV for 7nm, though. TSMC will extend today’s 193nm immersion and multiple patterning to 7nm, with plans to insert EUV at 5nm - [0]
Chip making is capital intensive, and a new factory that costs to the tune of $20 billions only allows a vendor to stay ahead of the competition for a few years. It’s entirely possible that Intel or Samsung will lead the race at the next technology milestone. They have work cut out for them of course. TSMC has been in the foundry business for a long time.