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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

#61

Post by KaoruAoiShiho »

ftxbro wrote: post #16
samwillis wrote: post #2

Some people may criticise the "monopoly" Apply have of TSMC latest nodes, but I think it's ultimately good. TSMC need to know they have a customer for new nodes in order to invest in them, thats what Apple are in the unique position to give with their war chest of cash. This investment by Apple eventually leads its way to other customers and smaller businesses. The whole industry thrives on the wake Apple leaves behi…

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.

I'm not aware of any local-LLM framework that works with Apple GPUs?

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

#62

Post by daniel-thompson »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #36
ftxbro wrote: 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.

Local LLMs do best on big GPUs, which aren’t an option on Macs. What Apple has done with the M-series silicon is really impressive, but it’s not as fast as big, dedicated GPU silicon. > like if the most cost-effective work boot of 2025 is produced by Gucci. Apple M-silicon laptops are high quality, but they’re not the same as overpriced luxury goods. The price of entry level M1/M2 Macs is extremely reasonable, IMO.

> Local LLMs do best on big GPUs, which aren’t an option on Macs.

For processing speed, Ms are fast but I agree not anywhere near a top Nvdia chip.

For memory size, the memory on an M chip can be used as graphics memory, so a person could get an M2 today with 128GB of graphics memory for ~ $5k. Not bad considering an Nvidia chip approaching that memory size is several times that much.

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

#63

Post by joakleaf »

lvl102 wrote: post #5

I feel this is a complete waste of leading tech: going into another slate of Apple products that do not need these advancements. I feel these slots should go to GPUs for AI and Apple is just hogging the capacity. It’d be one thing if Apple actually worked on AI softwares a bit and made it readily available to developers.

Regarding this: > It’d be one thing if Apple actually worked on AI softwares a bit and made it readily available to developers.

* Apple Silicon CPUs have a Neural Engine specifically made for fast ML-inference

* Apple supports PyTorch (https://developer.apple.com/metal/pytorch/)

* Apple has its own easily accessible machine-learning framework called Core-ML (https://developer.apple.com/machine-learning/)

So it would be inaccurate to say that they are not doing anything for the ML community.

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

#64

Post by foverzar »

samwillis wrote: post #2

Some people may criticise the "monopoly" Apply have of TSMC latest nodes, but I think it's ultimately good. TSMC need to know they have a customer for new nodes in order to invest in them, thats what Apple are in the unique position to give with their war chest of cash. This investment by Apple eventually leads its way to other customers and smaller businesses. The whole industry thrives on the wake Apple leaves behi…

> TSMC need to know they have a customer for new nodes in order to invest in them

I mean, does anyone doubt that thinner process nodes will be in demand?

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

#65

Post by samwillis »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #36
ftxbro wrote: 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.

Local LLMs do best on big GPUs, which aren’t an option on Macs. What Apple has done with the M-series silicon is really impressive, but it’s not as fast as big, dedicated GPU silicon. > like if the most cost-effective work boot of 2025 is produced by Gucci. Apple M-silicon laptops are high quality, but they’re not the same as overpriced luxury goods. The price of entry level M1/M2 Macs is extremely reasonable, IMO.

> it’s not as fast as big, dedicated GPU silicon

It's not yet. Apples combined memory architecture enables them to significantly cut the cost of bundling more memory for various GPU, Neural or other domain specific cores. I believe they will catch up or even overtake Nvidia as the leading AI platform.

Desktop AI class GPUs are hell expensive. If Apple can get something 50% as performant, but in an iPhone Pro or MacBook Air, thats going to change so very much.

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

#66

Post by neogodless »

michaelsshaw wrote: post #19
samwillis wrote: post #2

Some people may criticise the "monopoly" Apply have of TSMC latest nodes, but I think it's ultimately good. TSMC need to know they have a customer for new nodes in order to invest in them, thats what Apple are in the unique position to give with their war chest of cash. This investment by Apple eventually leads its way to other customers and smaller businesses. The whole industry thrives on the wake Apple leaves behi…

Nobody really benefits when the leading process node is being wasted by a walled garden company on, mostly, consumer laptops

There's a very common mindset that you only "benefit" if you have the latest, best "thing."

There are so many ways to benefit. I've never owned an Apple product in my life! And yet, I own an AMD CPU that was built on a TSMC process. I feel like that benefits me. Would that TSMC process be as good if they didn't have Apple as a customer? Maybe not. I don't know for sure - it's not something I obsess over.

It would be different if the products you could buy outside of Apple were actually bad. (And for some people who want fanless Apple Silicon, a lot of laptop alternatives are bad, but for my needs, both desktops and laptops with fans are fulfilling my needs and wants.)

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

#67

Post by MichaelZuo »

apozem wrote: post #41
samwillis wrote: post #2

Some people may criticise the "monopoly" Apply have of TSMC latest nodes, but I think it's ultimately good. TSMC need to know they have a customer for new nodes in order to invest in them, thats what Apple are in the unique position to give with their war chest of cash. This investment by Apple eventually leads its way to other customers and smaller businesses. The whole industry thrives on the wake Apple leaves behi…

Exactly. TSMC can spend tens of billions of dollars on new processes because they know Apple will be there day 1 to use it all. The iPhone and Mac have good performance and power efficiency, but people will always want their phone and laptop to do more and get longer battery life. Apple customers’ appetite for compute is practically bottomless.

> Apple customers’ appetite for compute is practically bottomless.

I don't think so, the typical iPhone user has not scaled up their compute needs much past the 2015 A9.

And if you exclude the computational photography stuff, I could imagine some users don't take advantage of it at all.

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

#68

Post by daniel_iversen »

eloisant wrote: post #40
JKCalhoun wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I'm googling this right Apple had perhaps $48B in cash in 2022. I don't know how others compare.

Goog = $110B MS = $100B Amazon = $64B Meta = $37B So no, Apple is not the big tech with the most cash. They do have a much higher market cap than the others but it's simply based on their brand image and speculation.

And revenue! i.e. 2022:

Apple: ~$395bn Microsoft: ~$200bn Amazon: ~$500bn Meta: $116bn

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

#69

Post by drexlspivey »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #58

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.

China invades Taiwan?

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

#70

Post by bzzzt »

lvl102 wrote: post #22
jjoonathan wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple pays a premium for the privilege of using their face to test the new node for brick walls. Sure, sometimes it means they get the newest bestest chips a year early and the fans can party, but if you're an anti-fan just remain patient and I suspect one of these years you will be the one with reason to party.

Which is my point exactly. They’re using market power to basically stymie competition. This is textbook anticompetitive behavior.

Investing into something better than your competitors make is competing, not anticompetitive.
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