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Apple Has Reportedly Rejected TSMC's Chip Price Hike of 6%

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Re: Apple Has Reportedly Rejected TSMC's Chip Price Hike of 6%

#251

Post by rowanG077 »

hollerith wrote: post #233
petesergeant wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Say "OK, for now!", and then drop some of its gigantic cash pile into helping another supplier that it part-owns become a real competitor

The Chinese government, whose cash piles are even larger, has been unsuccessfully trying to do that for decades (i.e., produce semiconductors on the Chinese mainland high-end enough to go into a notebook computer that can compete on the global market).

China has near cutting edge nodes. And that's without EUV. So I really wouldn't call it unsuccessful.

Re: Apple Has Reportedly Rejected TSMC's Chip Price Hike of 6%

#252

Post by ChuckNorris89 »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #245
ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Building your own semiconductor fab with good yelds that are profitable is monumentally more complex than all of those things combined. Why do you think only Intel and Samsung are the ones left at the cutting edge anf even they are struggling to keep up with TSMC? If you think Apple can just buy their way into fab success, you don't understand the complexities of semiconductor manufacturing.

> you don't understand the complexities of semiconductor manufacturing. Eh. Might know a thing or two, but I'm sure you know what you're talking about.

Please enlighten us.

Re: Apple Has Reportedly Rejected TSMC's Chip Price Hike of 6%

#253

Post by hollerith »

rowanG077 wrote: post #251
hollerith wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Chinese government, whose cash piles are even larger, has been unsuccessfully trying to do that for decades (i.e., produce semiconductors on the Chinese mainland high-end enough to go into a notebook computer that can compete on the global market).

China has near cutting edge nodes. And that's without EUV. So I really wouldn't call it unsuccessful.

Where can I buy a performant laptop or desktop with a CPU fabbed in China?

Re: Apple Has Reportedly Rejected TSMC's Chip Price Hike of 6%

#254

Post by rowanG077 »

hollerith wrote: post #253
rowanG077 wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China has near cutting edge nodes. And that's without EUV. So I really wouldn't call it unsuccessful.

Where can I buy a performant laptop or desktop with a CPU fabbed in China?

You can contact the vendor here: https://miner-va.com/

They are not desktop or laptop chips though. Targeted at miners. If you are willing you could probably reverse engineer them and do some fun stuff. But they are definitely not general purpose.

Re: Apple Has Reportedly Rejected TSMC's Chip Price Hike of 6%

#255

Post by AaronFriel »

canjobear wrote: post #183
fckgw wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I often think about the pickle story about how Wal-Mart can bully companies and their quest for always low prices have ripple effects. https://www.barnesandnoble.com/readouts/the-wal-mart-effect-...

Am I supposed to feel sorry for Vlasic here? The upshot is that I get cheaper pickles.

I think another upshot is that it ends up making all consumer products "lowest common denominator" consumer products. It's a vicious cycle:

Step 1: Company has a great product. Walmart begins stocking it nationwide, perhaps promoting it to increase their marketshare. That product's revenues explode, they expand, everything seems great.

Step 2 to N: Then Walmart threatens to pull from shelves unless they can meet the cost of $substituteGood. The company cuts costs to make it work. Rinse and repeat.

Step N+1: The product is no longer great.

This is exactly what has happened with Rubbermaid and with countless other consumer goods.

Re: Apple Has Reportedly Rejected TSMC's Chip Price Hike of 6%

#256

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #252
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you don't understand the complexities of semiconductor manufacturing. Eh. Might know a thing or two, but I'm sure you know what you're talking about.

Please enlighten us.

Nah, that's OK.

Have a great day!

Re: Apple Has Reportedly Rejected TSMC's Chip Price Hike of 6%

#257

Post by fomine3 »

UncleOxidant wrote: post #199
dylan604 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple: we'll pay no more for this item than ____ TSMC: you'll pay _____ or you can go to the other fab, oh right, you'll pay _____ -------- vendorSellingToBigBox: we would like _____ per unit of our product bigBoxBuyer: that's nice. we'll pay 40%______ per unit. you'll sell extremelyLargeNumberOfUnits, and make it up in volume. oh, if you don't sell a minimum number, you have to buy all of the unsold items back from…

> TSMC: you'll pay _____ or you can go to the other fab, oh right, you'll pay _____ It wouldn't be easy for Apple to just go to another fab. They'd have to find another vendor with the capacity and then they'd have to tweak things to match the new fab's design rules. Not trivial for something like M* chips. I suspect Intel would be happy to have Apple in their nascent foundry biz, but not sure they would have the cap…

I wonder why iPhone 14 non-Pro continue using A15 is related to this price negotiation, instead of supply shortage of 4nm

Re: Apple Has Reportedly Rejected TSMC's Chip Price Hike of 6%

#258

Post by philistine »

choko wrote: post #240
ras3022 wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's funny but $200B seemed way too small. Then I found this: https://www.pgpf.org/chart-archive/0053_defense-comparison "The United States spends more on national defense than China, India, Russia, United Kingdom, Saudi Arabia, Germany, France, Japan, and South Korea — combined." !? And $200B is inside the consensus estimate of $200B to $300B. Wow.

I'm not a fan of comparisons like that because they don't account for cost or standard of living between counties, just raw exchange rates. It would be especially pronounced when including countries like India and Russia.

You're right, but when the numbers are so lopsided on the US' favour, there's no way in hell that cost of living can account for such a stark difference.

I mean, the US has 20 aircraft carriers and the rest of the world has 28. The proof is in the pudding.

Re: Apple Has Reportedly Rejected TSMC's Chip Price Hike of 6%

#259

Post by fomine3 »

giantrobot wrote: post #210
colejohnson66 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But Apple needs TSMC. Not saying you’re wrong, but TSMC also has leverage. TSMC doesn’t want to price Apple out, but at the same time, Apple can’t just pack up and go to a competitor. At the nodes they’re working at, going to a competitor could require a complete relayout with new design rules.

Apple can't easily go to a competitor. They have the cash on hand to play kingmaker though. They could go to one of TSMC's competitors and make them into the new TSMC. TSMC's current position is largely due to Apple fronting huge sums of cash for them to develop new nodes. They get guaranteed sales at a generous price for the first few million chips off the line. There's few other players, if any, that could offer TS…

This is good point, compared to unrealistic Apple's own fab idea.

Re: Apple Has Reportedly Rejected TSMC's Chip Price Hike of 6%

#260

Post by quintushoratius »

cogman10 wrote: post #184
ras3022 wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s no way it’s that simple between Apple and TSMC. Apple also has something TSMC desperately needs too: the ability to pay upfront and guaranteed volume. Turning these lines on and off is basically impossible so guaranteed volume is a way to smooth out demand and is needed for planning. These factories are tremendously expensive and getting cash upfront is basically a zero interest loan in a time of high interes…

The TSMC fabs aren't idling. Between AMD, Intel, nVidia, Broadcom, Google, Amazon, etc. They've got customers with more demands for their chips than they have capacity to provide. If apple doesn't go to them, I think the only other option is Samsung? But I don't know that Samsung's fabs are open to third parties.

> But I don't know that Samsung's fabs are open to third parties.

They most definitely are, my employer has sent trial tape outs to them recently.

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