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> That was because of competition. The cost per transistor actually went down by a lot. I'm not talking about the marginal cost to make the device, I'm talking

> That was because of competition. The cost per transistor actually went down by a lot. I'm not talking about the marginal cost to make the device, I'm talking about the R&D and capital expenditure to develop and build the machines for the next node. You can be reductive and say it always boils down to competition, but then you would also say that ultimately shrinking will end when it can no longer compete with mature nodes. Competition in both cases. So I'm not sure what exactly that's getting at. > If it soon goes up significantly, it will stop to make economic sense to increase transistor density any further. Why pay the same amount of money for a less powerful chip? That's not strictly true, performance of a transistor still has value. Companies like Apple pay premiums to get in early on leading edge nodes, more per device than the mature nodes they move from.

cubefox 3y ago
Competition with "mature nodes" is different in the sense that here one company (like TSMC) will be "competing" with itself. They will just stop building next gen fabs if their chips wouldn't sell. > That's not strictly true, performance of a transistor still has value. Companies like Apple pay premiums to get in early on leading edge nodes, more per device than the mature nodes they move from. Apple can't increase the price of their product arbitrarily. So if the price per performance increases, the new iPhone would be slower than the old one. Maybe people will still buy it if it has better power efficiency, but that is a trade-off which has its limits.
- mschuster91 3y ago
  > Apple can't increase the price of their product arbitrarily. Not arbitrarily, but IIRC Apple's profit margin on iPhones is over 100% - the iPhone 14 Pro max is supposed to have a BoM cost of ~470 $ and retails for well over 1000$. That means Apple can both afford the high upfront premium/R&D cost of going to a smaller node and to eat up higher SoC costs and yet still have a profit per unit that would lead most other companies' CFOs to drool. On top of that, even if the economics should not work out for mobile... a fully spec'd out M2 Ultra Mac Pro runs at ~14.000$, Intel ones IIRC could reach 50.000$. The crowd that pays such absurd prices has zero problems paying a grand or two more for higher performance.
- throwawaylinux 3y ago
  > Competition with "mature nodes" is different in the sense that here one company (like TSMC) will be "competing" with itself. No, why? Lots of foundries out there that don't compete on leading edge nodes. > Apple can't increase the price of their product arbitrarily. So if the price per performance increases, the new iPhone would be slower than the old one. Maybe people will still buy it if it has better power efficiency, but that is a trade-off which has its limits. That doesn't address what I said -- that price per transistor is not the single limiting factor. I never said any performance increase is worth infinite value.
  - cubefox 3y ago
    > No, why? Lots of foundries out there that don't compete on leading edge nodes The discussion was about Moore's law ("scaling down"), which is only about the leading edge.
    - throwawaylinux 3y ago
      The discussion moved to talking about is competing with mature nodes, where you said they'd only be competing with themselves (which doesn't seem to be right).
      - cubefox 3y ago
        Well, it's right for the leading edge. The point is that they will stop scaling chips before technical limits are reached.
        throwawaylinux 3y ago
        > Well, it's right for the leading edge. No, the point was that the leading edge will stop advancing when it can no longer compete economically with companies that sell mature nodes. Which is obvious, but I was just being similarly reductive. > The point is that they will stop scaling chips before technical limits are reached. Sure, like most commercial ventures, cost becomes prohibitive at some point and overtakes benefits. As it always has been.

cubefox 3y ago

Competition with "mature nodes" is different in the sense that here one company (like TSMC) will be "competing" with itself. They will just stop building next gen fabs if their chips wouldn't sell. > That's not strictly true, performance of a transistor still has value. Companies like Apple pay premiums to get in early on leading edge nodes, more per device than the mature nodes they move from. Apple can't increase the price of their product arbitrarily. So if the price per performance increases, the new iPhone would be slower than the old one. Maybe people will still buy it if it has better power efficiency, but that is a trade-off which has its limits.

mschuster91 3y ago
> Apple can't increase the price of their product arbitrarily. Not arbitrarily, but IIRC Apple's profit margin on iPhones is over 100% - the iPhone 14 Pro max is supposed to have a BoM cost of ~470 $ and retails for well over 1000$. That means Apple can both afford the high upfront premium/R&D cost of going to a smaller node and to eat up higher SoC costs and yet still have a profit per unit that would lead most other companies' CFOs to drool. On top of that, even if the economics should not work out for mobile... a fully spec'd out M2 Ultra Mac Pro runs at ~14.000$, Intel ones IIRC could reach 50.000$. The crowd that pays such absurd prices has zero problems paying a grand or two more for higher performance.
throwawaylinux 3y ago
> Competition with "mature nodes" is different in the sense that here one company (like TSMC) will be "competing" with itself. No, why? Lots of foundries out there that don't compete on leading edge nodes. > Apple can't increase the price of their product arbitrarily. So if the price per performance increases, the new iPhone would be slower than the old one. Maybe people will still buy it if it has better power efficiency, but that is a trade-off which has its limits. That doesn't address what I said -- that price per transistor is not the single limiting factor. I never said any performance increase is worth infinite value.
- cubefox 3y ago
  > No, why? Lots of foundries out there that don't compete on leading edge nodes The discussion was about Moore's law ("scaling down"), which is only about the leading edge.
  - throwawaylinux 3y ago
    The discussion moved to talking about is competing with mature nodes, where you said they'd only be competing with themselves (which doesn't seem to be right).
    - cubefox 3y ago
      Well, it's right for the leading edge. The point is that they will stop scaling chips before technical limits are reached.
      - throwawaylinux 3y ago
        > Well, it's right for the leading edge. No, the point was that the leading edge will stop advancing when it can no longer compete economically with companies that sell mature nodes. Which is obvious, but I was just being similarly reductive. > The point is that they will stop scaling chips before technical limits are reached. Sure, like most commercial ventures, cost becomes prohibitive at some point and overtakes benefits. As it always has been.