Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Apple is fighting for TSMC capacity as Nvidia takes center stage

culpium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 501 posts

Re: Apple is fighting for TSMC capacity as Nvidia takes center stage

#211

Post by alt227 »

rafterydj wrote: post #12
Fiveplus wrote: post #6

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 tend to agree with you, feels to me like the root of this is essentially whether foundries will "go all in" on AI like the rest of the S&P 500. But why trade away one trillion-dollar customer for another trillion-dollar customer if the first one is never going away, and the second one might?

Why are foundries going 'All In' on AI? They fab chips for customers, doesnt matter what chips they are and who the customer is.'Who will pay the most for us to make their chips first' is the only question TMSC will be asking. The market of the customer is irrelevant.

Re: Apple is fighting for TSMC capacity as Nvidia takes center stage

#212

Post by neuroelectron »

flenserboy wrote: post #176

Of course they did stock buybacks instead of using their mountains of cash to lock out the competition or keeping their powder in reserve. Brilliant!

Pepperidge Farm remembers when stock buy backs were illegal stock manipulation

Re: Apple is fighting for TSMC capacity as Nvidia takes center stage

#213

Post by alt227 »

jobs_throwaway wrote: post #59
captain_coffee wrote: post #43

Legit question - what is the current status of the construction of chip production factories in the US? I know about the existence of the initiative but I don't know how it is progressing / what is actually going on on that front.

TMSC's Arizona fab is up and running producing 4nm chips There's ~a dozen in the works or under construction TMSC plans to have 2-3nm fabs operational in the next 2-3 years So we're 2-3 years behind the standard (currently 2nm), and further behind on the bleeding edge sub-2nm fabs

> TMSC's Arizona fab is up and running producing 4nm chips

Are the majority of the staff still shipped in from Asia?

Re: Apple is fighting for TSMC capacity as Nvidia takes center stage

#214

Post by sib »

engineer_22 wrote: post #50

I find that my cell phone which is 4 generations old and my desktop computer which is 2 generations old are totally adequate for everything I need to do, and I do not need faster processing

Wonderful!

I wish I were in that situation, but I find myself able to use lots more compute than I have. And it seems like many others feel the same.

Re: Apple is fighting for TSMC capacity as Nvidia takes center stage

#215

Post by Aurornis »

anoojb wrote: post #138
Fiveplus wrote: post #6

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…

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…

At this scale and volume, it's not really about good faith.

Changing fabs is non-trivial. If they pushed Apple to a point where they had to find an alternative (which is another story) and Apple did switch, they would have to work extra hard to get them back in the future. Apple wouldn't want to invest twice in changing back and forth.

On the other hand, TSMC knows that changing fabs is not really an option and Apple doesn't want to do it anyway, so they have leverage to squeeze.

At this level, everyone knows it's just business and it comes down to optimizing long-term risk/reward for each party.

Re: Apple is fighting for TSMC capacity as Nvidia takes center stage

#218

Post by alt227 »

kccqzy wrote: post #208
wmf wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because they are extremely loud, consume 8-10 kW, and probably cost $20K used.

The 8-10kW isn’t a big deal anymore given the prevalence of electric vehicles and charging them at home. A decade ago very few homes have this kind of hookup. Now it’s reasonably common, and if not, electricians wouldn’t bat an eye on installing it.

But the cost of running them is.

Re: Apple is fighting for TSMC capacity as Nvidia takes center stage

#219

Post by kyboren »

rob74 wrote: post #40
petcat wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The US has its own TSMC supply (insert comments about it not being cutting edge) USA has been strategically re-homing TSMC to the US mainland for a long time now. 30% of all 2nm and better technologies are slated to be produced in Arizona by 2030. The real loser in all of this will be the EU which will be completely without the ability to produce or acquire chips. They'll just end up buying from China and USA, whic…

Just because you haven't heard of it doesn't mean that the EU isn't doing anything: https://overclock3d.net/news/software/bringing_advanced_semi...

That's announcing 40k WSPMs of eventual capacity spread across 28nm and 16nm nodes. I mean, it's a start, and I'm sure automakers are totally stoked given the Nexperia debacle, but the EU will remain completely dependent on foreign advanced node semiconductors.

Compare to TSMC's Arizona project, which will supply 30% of TSMC's 2nm and smaller process output. Already just one of the six planned TSMC fabs in Arizona is pumping out ~30k WSPMs at 5nm or smaller.

And that doesn't even get into CoWoS packaging, which is essential for all the highest-performance and highest-margin parts.

The fact is: In semiconductors, Europe is getting left in the dust. Sure they can fab some mature node chips for industrial uses--and that's not nothing--but Smartphone SoCs, "AI" accelerators, DRAM, even boring CPUs simply cannot be made any more in Europe, and to the limited extent that they can, they will be horrendously uncompetitive on the market and outclassed in every performance metric by Chinese and American chips.

EU is on a big sovereignty kick right now, which makes sense given that their foreign dependencies keep blowing up in their faces. So it's strange that EU is so complacent about their foreign dependency on advanced node semiconductors.

Re: Apple is fighting for TSMC capacity as Nvidia takes center stage

#220

Post by alt227 »

boredatoms wrote: post #152
bob1029 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Semiconductor manufacturing is not an incremental step for Apple. It's an entirely new kind of vertical. They do not have the resources to do this. If they could they would have by now.

They could buy global foundaries and pour in a pile of cash, 5 years later they’d have something useful Or they could buy out Intel and sell off their cpu design division

If it was that simple, they would have done it.
Post reply on HN