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Why hasn't Apple just bought TSMC?
> Compared to 5nm process, the first-generation 3nm process can reduce power consumption by up to 45%, improve performance by 23% and reduce area by 16% compared to 5nm, while the second-generation 3nm process is to reduce power consumption by up to 50%, improve performance by 30% and reduce area by 35%. What kind of real-world impact are we likely to see on the 3nm chips for the new iPhone and M3 macs? These figures…
Why hasn't Apple just bought TSMC?
Why hasn't Apple just bought TSMC?
Why would they? With the current arrangement they get all the benefits and none of the risk. If TSMC falters they can go to whoever supplants TSMC and make the same arrangement and continue to have the latest and greatest chips.
They could annihilate all competition in the market except for them. Every single Android phone would be forced to use subpar manufacturing from there on out.
Why hasn't Apple just bought TSMC?
Apple doesn't have that amount of capital to even make an offer lol.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why would they? With the current arrangement they get all the benefits and none of the risk. If TSMC falters they can go to whoever supplants TSMC and make the same arrangement and continue to have the latest and greatest chips.
> Why would they? They could annihilate all competition in the market except for them. Every single Android phone would be forced to use subpar manufacturing from there on out.
TSMC is still in process of ramping up production of their 3nm process (the article mentions they'll reach 45,000 wafers per month by March), so the only sensible reading of this statement seems to be that Apple are getting first X months (where X is unspecified) of production capacity until capacity has ramped up.
It'd be interesting to try to correlate this 45,000 wafers/month number to Apple sales. The only readily available info I could find is that these are 12" wafers and will cost ~$20,000 each. I'm not sure how many good die Apple are getting out of each wafer. So that's about $1B/month apple is spending on CPUs apparently.
> Compared to 5nm process, the first-generation 3nm process can reduce power consumption by up to 45%, improve performance by 23% and reduce area by 16% compared to 5nm, while the second-generation 3nm process is to reduce power consumption by up to 50%, improve performance by 30% and reduce area by 35%. What kind of real-world impact are we likely to see on the 3nm chips for the new iPhone and M3 macs? These figures…
Perhaps more fanless macs. That would be great and make a difference in the user exeprience. Re iphone: I only use mail, safari and chat apps so I doubt I can see any difference.
You probably also take photos, where Apple automatically applies some Machine Learning tricks.
And wherever Machine Learning is used, more can be used. One day they could put an entire ChatGPT on the iPhone.