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Apple Books Nearly 90% of TSMC's 3nm Production Capacity for This Year

I think apple is being lazy.. increasing the density (decreasing the nm) for no reason...

they should focus on increasing the GPU performance of their M1,2,3 line of processors so that they can be a viable option for the industries that need it.

if feels nice when your web browser loads before you have time to take a breath, but then when u are sitting around waiting for the silicon to do REAL work it can be both perplexing and furstrating.

apple is digging themselves into a hole with this one.
 
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oneMadRssn said:
RAM amounts only being available in powers 2 was due to dual-channel RAM, where you needed two DIMMs of the same amount to maximize speed. Eg., it was faster to have 2x 32GB, instead of 1x 64GB. Apple silicon uses a different RAM system that is relatively agnostic to RAM amounts.
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Well, it was never a problem to have 2x16 GB plus 2x8 GB, for example, with four slots.
 
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Get the M3's ready for release next year. I've said it once I'll probably have to say it 50 more times whilst Mac Rumors reports nonsense from Gurman, you're NOT seeing ANY M3 product this year.
 
nottorp said:
An Apple product with a reasonable amount of RAM being the default? Nope, this cannot be.

And why 36? Non power of 2 numbers haven't been in fashion for ram in a long time.
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azentropy said:
Apple bucks trends. I would not be surprised is Apple moved to a 12/24/36 model. They do have a 24 M2 option. I wouldn't be surprised if it was a typo either.
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oneMadRssn said:
RAM amounts only being available in powers 2 was due to dual-channel RAM, where you needed two DIMMs of the same amount to maximize speed. Eg., it was faster to have 2x 32GB, instead of 1x 64GB. Apple silicon uses a different RAM system that is relatively agnostic to RAM amounts.
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More specifically, the LPDDR5 RAM that Apple uses in M2 series chips are primarily 4, 8 and 12 GB capacities, hence why your choices on the base M2 machines are 8 (2x4), 16 (2x8) or 24 (2x12). The M2 only has room for 2 RAM chips hence why Apple jumped to the non-integer 12GB instead of doing three 8GB or four 8GB for 32.

Regarding 36 GB RAM on an M3 Pro - SK Hynix, Apple's preferred memory supplier, recently announced production of 18GB LPDDR5 modules in mid-2021 (the largest modules on the market at the time), so that would be 2x18.

16GB and higher LPDDR5 modules are on the market but the cost goes up significantly. The Pro and Max variants use these higher capacities in 2x (Pro) and 4x (Max) configurations.
 
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azentropy said:
Apple bucks trends. I would not be surprised is Apple moved to a 12/24/36 model. They do have a 24 M2 option. I wouldn't be surprised if it was a typo either.
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Anyone out there smarter than me care to explain if this amount of ram is actually a problem in any way? Do we generally just use powers of two because it usually works out that way due to the way ram is made? In the pc world in my experience you only have an amount like this if someone has been mixing and matching modules. That generally causes its own issues but from a software programming perspective it doesn’t seem like it would matter.
 
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Love-hate 🍏 relationship said:
Wait , this is TERRIBLE for competition !

is no one else afraid of apple monopoly?
They already arrogate far too many rights to themselves
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It is really terrible for competition. Some government somewhere needs to force these companies to buy chips they don’t want or need. OH, better yet, force Apple to buy chips for these other companies!
 
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bradman83 said:
More specifically, the LPDDR5 RAM that Apple uses in M2 series chips are primarily 4, 8 and 12 GB capacities, hence why your choices on the base M2 machines are 8 (2x4), 16 (2x8) or 24 (2x12). The M2 only has room for 2 RAM chips hence why Apple jumped to the non-integer 12GB instead of doing three 8GB or four 8GB for 32.

Regarding 36 GB RAM on an M3 Pro - SK Hynix, Apple's preferred memory supplier, recently announced production of 18GB LPDDR5 modules in mid-2021 (the largest modules on the market at the time), so that would be 2x18.

16GB and higher LPDDR5 modules are on the market but the cost goes up significantly. The Pro and Max variants use these higher capacities in 2x (Pro) and 4x (Max) configurations.
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Oh... when i saw 24 Gb i thought it's 3x8 not 2x12. Non power of two memory chips explains it, i was just not aware of their existence, thanks.
 
gpat said:
I'm still not convinced about the A17 being a product of N3B, I would've expected N3E from the start.
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N3E isn't viable for A17. It doesn't start high volume production until 2H 2023 (which at earliest is July). N3B reportedly takes about 4 months to 'bake' through the entire fab process. N3E will be incrementally shorter but it still would be multiple months. Pragmatically you can't start in July and have finished phones in the volume of 10's of millions by the end of September. It is technologically completely arbitrary ,"fixed in stone" , September launch date that is the primary root cause.

The best N3E could do in 2023 is some product in the 'sub millions' by the end of the year. That would completely miss the annual September dog-and-pony show on multiple dimensions (both time and quantity).


Pragmatically the inventory build for the iPhone demand bubble of Sept-October has historically started in April-May time frame. So any TSMC process that starts high volume after that is not viable. The substantively longer bake times for N3B have likely effectively pushed the start time even further back into the March.

So on the roadmaps from several years ago (which pegged N3E at 2H 2023) , it was never viable to pick that as a target.

It wouldn't be very surprising if Apple skips N3E and just waits until N3P (or some custom Apple N3P-esque early ) to make a process shift. A18 could be mainly a minor tweak that still uses N3B. It depends upon just how deeply Apple leveraged N3B's propterties to maximal effect. N3E is a backslide on SRAM/cache sizes. (get a bigger die faster ... )
 
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rpmurray said:
... and still no word on the Mac Pro.
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iPhones are still paying the bills at Apple. As of last month (2Q 2023 conference call) iPhone contributed to over 54 % of Apple's entire revenue, while Macs only contributed 7.6 % across all references combined. It is clear that iPhone is a more profitable business for Apple and therefore more effort is put into it, it refreshes every year, new features are added, and new processors are employed, etc.

Also something many people are not aware or don't like to acknowledge is that Macs do not have a big user base outside of the US, partly because of costs, but there are other reasons too, while iPhone is indeed a sought after product in many markets outside the US (Europe, Japan, Asia, even LatAm).
 
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I hope they are building more foundries and building them all over the world (Europe, India, US, Canada, Australia, etc).
 
TheYayAreaLiving 🎗️ said:
If true! The battery life is going to receive a massive improvement and efficiency.
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Well, I hope they don’t use this as an excuse to make the battery smaller, as that didn’t work with iPhone 14, also, what about the gpu? Didnt the new one get dropped at the last minute so they had to use the old one in the iPhone 14 pro? I’ve been wondering if this what has led to so many battery issues and bugs.

Edit: Found the article.

www.macrumors.com

iPhone 14 Pro Faced 'Unprecedented' Setback Leading to Removal of New Graphics Processor

Apple planned a major generational update for the iPhone 14 Pro's graphics capabilities, but was forced to scrap plans for the new GPU late in...
www.macrumors.com www.macrumors.com
 
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rpmurray said:
... and still no word on the Mac Pro.
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I mean by the beginning of the year it was pretty clear that if we’re going to hear anything itll be at WWDC or later, so if you’re sitting hitting refresh on MR for that one it’s pretty futile. WWDC is in 3 weeks, let’s hope we hear something then
 
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Always a baller move.

I guess AMD was muscled out by Apple and Nvidia and has to go Samsung.
 
nottorp said:
An Apple product with a reasonable amount of RAM being the default? Nope, this cannot be.

And why 36? Non power of 2 numbers haven't been in fashion for ram in a long time.
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48 is a pretty common RAM amount, as is 96, neither are powers of 2. For that matter Apple uses 24 as the max in the M2 which isnt either. They are easily decomposable into chips that are powers of 2, which is what you’re thinking of I guess, which are the most common but 12gb ram dimms and the like do exist


10 and 12 for that matter are common RAM sizes for graphics cards right now, hell I just bought a 10gb card for my windows machine I use for gaming

If it was, like, 39 it’d be odd (literally and figuratively :p), though perfectly functional, 36 isnt all that odd.
 
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Love-hate 🍏 relationship said:
All jokes aside i saw you liked my comment , do you hear my point , or was it a big finger issue ?
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I thought you were being funny. Apple has a large percentage of TSMC’s 3nm output because no one else wants/needs 3nm. There was a story earlier that, if Apple didn’t want 3nm, TSMC likely wouldn’t even make any 3nm processors because the market as a whole just aren’t interested.

For example, if TSMC wants to produce 1 million chips (because the cost of those would be a nice boost to their earnings) and the total output desired by the entire rest of the technology world is 100,000 chips, then if Apple steps up and says they want 900,000, then TSMC is going to sell to Apple to meet their sales targets!

Why would companies be largely uninterested in 3nm?
-It’s TSMC’s first 3nm processors… companies may want some test chips, but don’t want to depend on new, untested tech for a current product line.
-Their current customers don’t need the benefits of 3nm processors.
-They don’t want to pay the premium for 3nm processors (because their customers are cost constrained).
…etc
 
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