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Apple COO Jeff Williams Reportedly Visits Taiwan to Secure 2nm Chips
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As someone in the manufacturing business, I can say if we had a very successful and reliable customer that wants to buy 95% of our output, we would take them far more seriously than a handful of customers of varying reliability.
If Apple (and pretty much any American company) were smart, they would read the last 20 years of news from the Taiwan Strait and invest in TSMC’s Arizona plant. The sooner that is up and running, the better for everyone outside of the People’s Republic.
We may see some one from tech/ p
TSMC is more dependent on Apple than other way around. If Apple isn’t a big part of TSMC, that probably means Apple has bigger problems than TSMC. I doubt Apple can have multiple foundry vendors given the complexity and differences between each vendor.I mostly agree... but another view of this is not so great: all (phone/iPad/Mac) eggs in ONE basket.
In a scenario where Apple loses first access to TSMC, what then (one realistic scenario)? There is no easy fallback option to quickly scale up production of equivalent chips.
I would be surprised if Apple doesn’t release a M4 Ultra, M4 max will be out for MBP anyways.
Smallest current features are still like 14nm. The phrasing in use is just marketing.
yea, but, the processes between the various foundries are quite different, and your link is paywalled, but if the "China threat to Taiwan" ever becomes a real issue, we have much more to worry about than chips ...I mostly agree... but another view of this is not so great: all (phone/iPad/Mac) eggs in ONE basket.
In a scenario where Apple loses first access to TSMC, what then (one realistic scenario)? There is no easy fallback option to quickly scale up production of equivalent chips.
Apple/TSMC is a symbiotic relationship, Apple works very closely with TSMC to drive process technology and rewards them with volume, win-win.
Sourcing the same chips from different foundries would drive up cost significantly as there would be 2 different designs and a supply chain to manage
There’s still something to be said for visiting a business associate you have worked with for years.
Not just Apple, when Nvidia moved from Samsung (3000 series GPU) to TSMC (4000 series GPU) for their dies, the cards power efficiency increased dramatically and the performance jump was one of the biggest generational jumps ever for them, at least when you look at high demanding task like raytracing workloads like in 3D rendering and games.
Same can be said for AMD CPUs which have been showing huge performance per watt gains compared to Intel.
People may say, nm size naming is just marketing, but it's obvious that whatever TSMC is calling their node size, is that it's miles more efficient than the competition.
2nm is not just power, battery life improvements can be significant.
i do agree, Apple is lacking in software.
Apple will probably buy SOC manufactured in Arizona.
Intel made a big mistake when they refused to make SOC for Apple, they are repenting now.
No. Anyone but Williams. He is single-handedly responsible for Apple’s abandonment of good design. He’s like Tim Cook. He has no vision. He’s not a product guy. He’s not a designer. He doesn’t have good taste. He’s another lame MBA bean counter. A “bozo” one might say.
Given the timeline of these things I have my doubts the iPhone 17 lineup (A19) will be built on N2. My guess is:
A17: N3B
A18: N3E
A19: N3P
A20: N2
I would be willing to bet this is more like a head of states summit where the meeting is mostly a formality with all of the details of agreements nailed down beforehand.
