191–200 of 501 posts
How about they take a break and focus on their software for the next 2 years?
One would think (hope / pray?) that a $4T company could walk and chew gum at the same time. But, apparently not.
As a heavy user of OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google AI APIs, I’m increasingly tempted to buy a Mac Studio (M3 Ultra or M4 Pro) as a contingency in case the economics of hosted inference change significantly.
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So let's say TMSC reciprocated Apple's consistency as a customer by giving them preferential treatment for capacity. It's good business after all. However, everyone knows that good faith reciprocity at that scale is not rewarded. Apple is ruthless. There are probably thousands of untold stories of how hard Apple has hammered it's suppliers over the years. While Apple has good consumer brand loyalty, they arguably tre…
Counter argument is that is NVIDIA friendly to their supply chain? I have to think that maybe they are with their massive margins because they can be - their end buyer is currently willing to absorb costs at no expense. But I don't know, and that will change as their business changes. Your underlying statement implies that whoever is replacing apple is a better buyer which I don't think is necessarily true.
That means deprioritizing your largest customer.
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You'd want to get something like a RTX Pro 6000 (~ $8,500 - $10,000) or at least a RTX 5090 (~$3,000). That's the easiest thing to do or cluster of some lower-end GPUs. Or a DGX Spark (there are some better options by other manufacturers than just Nvidia) (~$3000).
Yes, I also considered the RTX 6000 Pro Max-Q, but it’s quite expensive and probably only makes sense if I can use it for other workloads as well. Interestingly, its price hasn’t gone up since last summer, here in Germany.
Calling Nvidia niche feels a bit wild given their status-quo right now, but from a foundry perspective, it seems true. Apple is the anchor tenant that keeps the lights on across 12 different mature and leading-edge fabs. Nvidia is the high-frequency trader hammering the newest node until the arb closes. Stability usually trades at a discount during a boom, but Wei knows the smartphone replacement cycle is the only pr…
I would also bet significant money that Apple's unique market position will give them the confidence to invest in in-house fabrication before 2030.
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There are levels inside pro, max, and ultra that might be the product of binning?
"Ultra" isn't even binned - it's just 2x "Max" chips connected together. Otherwise, yes, if a chip doesn't make M4 Max, it can make M4 Pro. If not, M4. If not, A18 Pro. If not that, A18. And even all of the above mentioned marketing names come in different core configurations. M4 Max can be 14 CPU Cores / 32 GPU cores, and it can also be 16 CPU cores and 40 GPU cores. So yeah, I'd agree that Apple has _extreme_ binni…
There are two levels of Max Chip, but think of a Max as two pros on die (this is simplification, you can also think of as pro as being two normal cores tied together), so a bad max can't be binned into a pro. But a high-spec Max can be binned into a low-spec Max.
Calling Nvidia niche feels a bit wild given their status-quo right now, but from a foundry perspective, it seems true. Apple is the anchor tenant that keeps the lights on across 12 different mature and leading-edge fabs. Nvidia is the high-frequency trader hammering the newest node until the arb closes. Stability usually trades at a discount during a boom, but Wei knows the smartphone replacement cycle is the only pr…
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Counter argument is that is NVIDIA friendly to their supply chain? I have to think that maybe they are with their massive margins because they can be - their end buyer is currently willing to absorb costs at no expense. But I don't know, and that will change as their business changes. Your underlying statement implies that whoever is replacing apple is a better buyer which I don't think is necessarily true.
If your customers are known to be antagonistic to business partners, the correct answer is to diversify them as much as you can, even at reasonable costs from anything else. That means deprioritizing your largest customer.
Also theres the devil you know and the devil you dont know.
Nvidia direct silicon revenue is higher. Also Nvidia's margins are higher which means that they will be willing to pay a higher unit price. This seems like an open and closed case from TSMC's side.