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

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

#211
post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>It remains to be seen whether it can even be done. Toyota famously failed with a similar attempt in Fremont, California.

Every Japanese auto maker has had US plants for decades. Toyota's oldest, in Georgetown KY, has been there since 1986.

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

#212
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.

Not many laptops have 64 gb of RAM that can run llama.cpp https://gist.github.com/zitterbewegung/4787e42617aa0be6019c3...

Plenty of non-Apple laptops support 64GB RAM. For example, both the AMD and Intel variants of the Framework Laptop can take 64GB. All of of the large vendors have laptops that support a 64GB configuration too (HP, Dell, Lenovo).

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

#213

The article quotes 36gb of ram for the m3 MacBook pros. Which made me wonder: why do we use power-of-2 gb ram configurations? If apple does 12/24/36, is that reasonable, or is there a reason not to?

DDR5 supports non power of 2 sized modules. You can find 48GB DDR5 modules, for example.

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

#214
post #3

Given what has transpired about the Chips act for foreign manufacturers including TSMC I find it incredibly dumb and shortsighted of TSMC to hedge all their bets on Apple.

They haven't placed all their bets with Apple. Read their earnings report. They have a lot of demand. Apple is just a premier customer.

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

#215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'm not sure I understand what you mean by Democratic spirit here, a couple hours after you wrote it and i saw it. 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…

I appreciate the question.

Conceptually, the idea that an individual signals their support for a business by "voting with your dollars" makes logical sense. However it breaks down for a few reasons I detail below.

1. Illusion of product choice. Apple and Google are the only realistic options for 99% of smartphone users in America. You'll say look at all these other choices and point to a handful of alternative options, however unless you are in a completely different culture, or decide to join a counter-cultural movement you're going to choose a smart phone from Apple or Google because that's the culture we live in and you will be out of the loop if you do not. You might quibble that people could do something *if they only did [x, y, z]" but that's not how groups of people work and you know it. I think at this point over a TRILLION dollars has been spent convincing everyone that if you don’t have a smartphone (with blue text) then you’re not part of the real culture. Bernays proved long ago that propaganda works and it's literally the driving external motivation for our entire culture.

2. Illusion of organizational choice. But let’s say you did vote with your feet and you want to support Nokia. Great, however now all you're doing is supporting another major corporation that wants to be in the same position as Apple, but they just have different owners in a different country. Switching didn't do anything to actually diffuse power, its simply choosing a different privately owned dictatorship to align to. Apple and Google are really no different here, so choosing one over the other nets the same thing in terms of concentration of economic power.

3. Political power. The power that these companies wield in the regulatory capture game reaches far beyond any choice you may think you have or any chance you have as a small company to have an equivalent voice – if for no other reason than you can’t afford a congressman or supreme court justice. So all those "choices" you want still have to comply with whatever the corporate lobby thinks the law should say about technologies and they aren’t bashful with writing legislation. (Every government has their acquisitions system captured by major capitalist corporations)

4. Companies delegate responsibility for externalities. Recycling is a great example here. It's well known that the plastics industry has decided to "pass the decision" along to consumers by stamping their products with 1-5 recycling indicias. Problem is, most recycling systems cannot process or do not have recycling demand for anything 3-5, forcing consumers to do the work to differentiate. In fact, these same plastics companies KNOW that they are not recyclable yet intentionally do not reduce usage, meanwhile greenwashing their products to convince consumers that they are. Ok now do that for every other externality or illegal practice like slavery wages and wage theft, PFAS, CFC's, child labor etc... and there would be basically no companies in business

5. Consumers must know everything to make an actual informed choice. OK, so you say, “well I’m smart enough, I want to make a purchase that is good quality, has a net positive impact on resource use, uses pro-social labor practices and is inside my budget” in order to do this you need to spend an hour researching every supply chain and review etc… to get past the submarine articles, general marketing propaganda, obscene obfuscation of operating practices and on and on and as a result almost nobody has the time or energy. So then people look to third party review sites (all corporate sponsored) so you can’t actually trust the reviews.

The fact that people COULD do something differently is held back by the fact that most people WONT because corporations have structured everything to support the structure that supports them. In no way is this democratic because it doesn’t actually include what the alternatives could be and WE DO NOT BUILD INFRASTRUCTURE FOR ALTERNATIVES. So doing anything other than scamming people or trying to find a sucker left holding the bag (aka an EXIT opportunity/Liquidity event) is “off the beaten path.”

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

#216

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.

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…

Huawei has been great but unlikely to be next Apple due to sanction

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

#217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They make about 50 a year. One of the parts in these machines is a 30cm mirror that is the flattest that humans can make with our current level of technology. If you have a way to churn them out please let Zeiss SMT know.

Do whatever they are doing now, but twice? What in the process wouldn’t work with this method?

But then they’d get less money

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

#219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure I understand what you mean by Democratic spirit here, a couple hours after you wrote it and i saw it. 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…

I appreciate the question. Conceptually, the idea that an individual signals their support for a business by "voting with your dollars" makes logical sense. However it breaks down for a few reasons I detail below. 1. Illusion of product choice. Apple and Google are the only realistic options for 99% of smartphone users in America. You'll say look at all these other choices and point to a handful of alternative option…

cool response! much appreciated

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

#220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You would be correct if investment were the bottleneck. It's not. The bottleneck on advanced processes is how fast ASML can build its EUV fabrication machines and they're extremely complicated pieces of kit with lots of specialized parts that are also extremely complicated pieces of kit. Even with all our modern production ability we're limited in how quickly we can assemble these machines that can actually do the li…

Why can't ASML scale? They are siting on $20B of orders. That is insane. What is ASML's delivery throughput of these machines?

A bit late to the party but the 100 backorders is in fact quite small if you consider they make 50 a year (as mentionned by another comment).

Even if it was possible to double the production for free in a year then without new orders when this come online you only have 50 orders left to process ...

If you look some plane production backorders are in the decade I believe atm. Looking at the A320 orders you can see how they ramp up production (and this ramp up might production line switching from aircraft type not new lines) : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Airbus_A320neo_famil...

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