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Apple to occupy 90% of TSMC 3nm capacity in 2023
- infinityplus1 3y agoWho gets the remaining 10% capacity?
- ChuckNorris89 3y agoSampling for future customers.
- tobyhinloopen 3y agoI bought it all
- microtherion 3y agoBitcoin miners
- barbariangrunge 3y agoThe 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?
- ac29 3y agoDDR5 supports non power of 2 sized modules. You can find 48GB DDR5 modules, for example.
- cainxinth 3y agoTim Cook must sweat bullets every time he reads a headline about China potentially invading Taiwan.
- dna_polymerase 3y agoTSMC is expanding into the US for that reason. Their 3nm fabs will be in Arizona (in addition to Taiwan)
- _zoltan_ 3y agoArizona won't do N3 until 2026. TSMC said that the leading node will always be in Taiwan and N+1 will be outside.
- drexlspivey 3y agoSo Apple wont be buying the Arizona chips since they’ll always be behind. Was Tim Cook saying all those big words in the fab opening ceremony just for show?
- yreg 3y ago> But as Steve Jobs of Apple spoke, President Obama interrupted with an inquiry of his own: what would it take to make iPhones in the United States? > Why can’t that work come home? Mr. Obama asked. > Mr. Jobs’s reply was unambiguous. “Those jobs aren’t coming back,” he said, according to another dinner guest. 2011, https://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/22/business/apple-america-and-a-squeezed-middle-class.html https://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/22/business/apple-america-an...
- Etheryte 3y agoThat's incredibly smart, when world powers rely on you to deliver cutting edge hardware either directly or by proxy, you can bet they'll also have a word or two to say about any plans China might have.
- VWWHFSfQ 3y agoIsn'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.
- dralley 3y agoNo. What you're missing is that the fabs moving to the US are pretty much just the ones the US military might need. TSMC isn't moving their cutting edge production here. The fabs will be a node or two behind.
- Workaccount2 3y agoWhich is why there is a lot of pressure on Intel to pull off their new EUV-2 fabs.
- Strom 3y ago> 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 the actual Taiwanese workers play a significant part in their success? Unanswered thus far.
- TMWNN 3y ago>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.
- Strom 3y agoThe Fremont factory predates the Georgetown factory by a few years, and of course even more if we consider the pre-Toyota history of it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NUMMI https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NUMMI https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_Motor_Manufacturing_Kentucky https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_Motor_Manufacturing_Ken...
- PaywallBuster 3y agoif China invaded Taiwan, probably we'd have 100x more problems and demand for apple hardware would dwindle prob not his worse case scenario :)
- ChatGTP 3y agoI'd imagine it would be WW3 and probably a civilization breaking event, would take a long time to recover from.
- harveywi 3y agoSweat bullets? You may be confusing Tim Cook with Tim Gunn.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- freedomben 3y agoTim Cook has shown a pretty serious willingness to work with the CCP in the past, and their human rights track record right now is pretty bad. What makes you think either he wouldn't do so after an invasion or that China would do anything to disrupt one of the biggest prices and competitive advantages in the world (TSMC)?
- adam_arthur 3y agoThe US Government would clearly engage in economic warfare, at the very least, with China if they were to invade Taiwan. Likely access to cutting edge chips would go with it... assuming China is occupying Taiwan. Yes, this would lower QoL pretty significantly for both countries.
- samwillis 3y agoSome 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 behind. As a complete other aside, I'm excited to see what comes with the M3, particularly any neural cores. I would be much more excited about all the new AI tools if they could be run locally, Apple are again in the unique position to be able to make that possible for the masses. WWDC is hopefully going to be super interesting. What we need is a sudden and massive increase in memory on these chips to make having LLMs viable on everyday affordable devices. I do wander if that may be something Apple surprise us with.
- ftxbro 3y agoIt 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.
- foldr 3y agoIf you care about the combination of portability, battery life, performance, and display+audio quality, then Apple’s laptops have been price competitive for quite a while now. People who think they are overpriced usually don’t care about at least one of these things.
- PragmaticPulp 3y agoLocal 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.
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- rjzzleep 3y agoGiven 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.
- renewiltord 3y agoThey haven't placed all their bets with Apple. Read their earnings report. They have a lot of demand. Apple is just a premier customer.
- andy_ppp 3y agoIs there any projection on when and if Intel will catch TSMC? Seems TSMC keep managing to deliver every single planned process improvement on time.
- epolanski 3y agoNone of us knows and I haven't seen any projections that Intel's gonna catch TSMC.
- agd 3y agoIntel claim this should be by 2025 (once their 18A process comes on line). Obviously they could miss this target, but they say they're still on track.
- epolanski 3y agoThey said to be on track with their 10nm node too for 8 years, how did it end?
- Etheryte 3y agoGiven their current pace, Intel isn't catching but falling behind instead. This has been going on for quite a long time now to be honest.
- signatoremo 3y agoTSMC managed to leapfrog Intel not too long ago. They still didn’t plan to adopt EUV as recently as 2017: Not everyone is banking on EUV for 7nm, though. TSMC will extend today’s 193nm immersion and multiple patterning to 7nm, with plans to insert EUV at 5nm - [0] Chip making is capital intensive, and a new factory that costs to the tune of $20 billions only allows a vendor to stay ahead of the competition for a few years. It’s entirely possible that Intel or Samsung will lead the race at the next technology milestone. They have work cut out for them of course. TSMC has been in the foundry business for a long time. [0] - https://semiengineering.com/why-euv-is-so-difficult/ https://semiengineering.com/why-euv-is-so-difficult/
- lvl102 3y agoI 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.
- pjc50 3y agoApple need to make another few hundred million iPhones every year.
- bombcar 3y agoIf the M3 doesn’t have some AI capacities that are at least somewhat utilized by something (probably bad Siri) I’ll be highly surprised.
- JKCalhoun 3y agoEveryone, please let me have "Bad Siri" for the name of my next band.
- bombcar 3y agoI was watching a YouTube video and the guy said something like "but hey, seriously" and the audio on the computer muted and Siri appeared wondering what was going on. So your first hit single should be about how important grass cultivation is to modern meat production: "Hay, seriously."
- hammock 3y agoIt’s the hardware version of the tech company “hire this smart person so they don’t go work somewhere else”
- lvl102 3y agoIt’s anticompetitive. DoJ/FTC should be all over this. They’re using leading edge for VR. Whatever they’re rolling out next month will go down as one of their biggest failures and it will be Tim Cook’s legacy.
- zitterbewegung 3y agoWasn't this already announced but at 100%? https://www.extremetech.com/computing/343291-apple-has-procured-tsmcs-entire-first-run-of-3nm-chips https://www.extremetech.com/computing/343291-apple-has-procu... or they are just changing their order?
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 3y ago> while Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo believes that new 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pro models coming in 2024 will feature M3 Pro and M3 Max chips. I am really excited about the M3. The M1, with its unified memory it can already run decently large LLMs. It would be great if Apple was able to make the M3 even better at that. In addition, it seems like there is a lot of momentum in releasing models that the user can run on consumer hardware. I would love to have my own private LLMs running on my own hardware
- justplay 3y agoI was planning to purchase a Macbook, but now I think it's better to wait for M3. I am impressed with the M3 specifications. It would be ideal if I could run LLM models on my computer locally.
- barbariangrunge 3y agoMy impression is the m3 won’t be available until next year. Although I suspect it will be in the headset, since those things are going to need a lot of power
- 0zemp2c 3y ago...and when M3 laptops come to market, M1 laptops (10x the performance 95% of users will need) will drop to $499, a giant shovel of dirt spread over the Wintel coffin
- cubefox 3y agoThis could mean Qualcomm will release again something like the Snapdragon 888 and Snapdragon Gen 1, when they temporarily switched from TSMC to Samsung, with disappointing results.
- AndrewKemendo 3y agoI’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.
- drexlspivey 3y agoChina invades Taiwan?
- AndrewKemendo 3y agoIs this legitimately the only realistic option?
- jopython 3y agoThat has to be accounted for.
- freedomben 3y agoWhy would this affect Apple? I would think China would not want to destroy TSMC, quite the opposite they'd love to have it. They would also want to get Taiwan humming economically again as fast as possible. Apple has been plenty happy to work with the CCP in the past, so I don't understand how/why this would bankrupt Apple or really even cause them lots of problems.
- josephcsible 3y agoChina wouldn't want to destroy TSMC. The West would rather destroy TSMC than let China have it.
- philistine 3y agoIf China invades, the West probably couldn't swallow Russian-style sanctions for the whole country, but it would assuredly enact sanctions related to activity in Taiwan. TSMC is not trading with China suppliers to make its chips, its trading West. https://www.techspot.com/news/96291-taiwan-destroying-tsmc-event-chinese-invasion-unnecessary.html https://www.techspot.com/news/96291-taiwan-destroying-tsmc-e... So TSMC would probably become irrelevant in due time if there were strong sanctions against China. That, and the persistent rumour that Taiwan has a plan to literally blow up the fabs if China invades gives us a picture were invading Taiwan is ideological for China, not an economic power grab.
- ricokatayama 3y agoAnd this is what we call monopsony.
- neogodless 3y agoBut "3nm" is not the only manufacturing service TSMC sells. They are selling from their other lines to lots of other customers. What's the overall annual dollar amount TSMC sells, and of that, what percentage is Apple, regardless of the specific production line?
- Night_Thastus 3y agoThe market for everything other than the cutting edge is absolutely massive. 3nm is shiny and all, but it's not what most of the world runs on. It definitely would be nice if there were more options at the cutting edge, but it's like that for good reasons and it's not likely to change.
- NelsonMinar 3y agoIt's astonishing how TSMC is the only company in the world that can do this. They are just so far ahead of everyone else in manufacturing. It'd sure be nice to have more capacity. The Economist had a good article a few months ago about the volume of chip manufacture by country and process size. The takeaway is Taiwan leads < 10nm, the US and Taiwan lead 10-22nm, and that > 22nm is an interesting mix including South Korea and China. Chart: https://www.economist.com/img/b/400/834/90/media-assets/image/20230204_ASC624.png https://www.economist.com/img/b/400/834/90/media-assets/imag... Article: https://www.economist.com/asia/2023/02/02/americas-hoped-for-asian-semiconductor-pact-looks-tricky https://www.economist.com/asia/2023/02/02/americas-hoped-for...
- undersuit 3y agoYou don't mention Samsung, is this the case of their 3nm not being actually 3nm? https://wccftech.com/samsung-secures-3-nm-advanced-chip-orders-from-nvidia-qualcomm-report/ https://wccftech.com/samsung-secures-3-nm-advanced-chip-orde...
- NelsonMinar 3y agoI'm not an expert on the tech and can't say. Just going on what the Economist article talks about, South Korean manufacturing represents a tiny fraction of the smallest processes right now. The article you linked says the 3nm will start producing in 2024. That's good news, maybe there's competition coming.
- undersuit 3y agoThe Samnsung 3nm will be sold in 2024, produced in 2023. I'll admit TSMC might have an edge in the timing but the OP article also hedges their statements by specifying TSMC will have limited availability of the 3nm in the second half of 2023 and the Apple product refresh in Fall 2023 might contain these 3nm components. I just don't think Samsung is really that far behind as right now both companies are just selling promises.
- 3y ago
- scrlk 3y ago> Apple has booked nearly 90% of chip supplier TSMC's first-generation 3-nanometer process capacity this year No surprise, the N3B ("first gen") process has bad economics and poor yields. Everyone else is waiting for N3E, which is pretty different to N3B. See: https://www.semianalysis.com/p/tsmcs-3nm-conundrum-does-it-even https://www.semianalysis.com/p/tsmcs-3nm-conundrum-does-it-e... https://fuse.wikichip.org/news/7048/n3e-replaces-n3-comes-in-many-flavors/ https://fuse.wikichip.org/news/7048/n3e-replaces-n3-comes-in...