Thanks for that link. Efficiency is a terrible metric if yield isn't taken into account. If you can produce a 2% more efficient chip, but end up having to toss 60% of your production run because the yield isn’t good, then how efficient is that chip, really?
This is Apple, they have the resources to accomplish both. They need to make their scientists do their job.
Final? I don't think there's a single nail in the coffin. In fact, I doubt the coffin has been ordered.
Recessions only affect middle/low income families. People with money are just fine. It's the latter category that the "$3500 piece of kit" it targeted at.
Yep. The Tim Cook era is people getting all dramatic over some rumor.
Not to mention that according to rumors, Apple is only paying for good chips instead of the whole wafer.
Have you been paying attention to apple’s chips over the last decade or so? They’re doing just fine
What are you even talking about? Even if you took the article at face value without any of this thread’s context all it would mean would be a tiny drop in efficiency and a tiny *increase* in performance… on super efficient chips… with ever increasing battery enhancements that can easily absorb a slight uptick in power usage
No. A17 is stop-gap chip. With A18 we will start seeing the capabilities of 3nm.
What's your basis for saying A17 is a stop-gap for 3 nm? Apple expected A17 to be on 3 nm, so it was certainly designed for that process.
Putting A17 on the N3B does have benefits over the A16 on the N4P. And N3E has some different tradeoffs, like any choice. It’s not clear from the limited information that we have that there is much noticeable difference between the two 3nm processes.
That doesn't make sense. The reason they wanted to move from 5 nm to 3 nm wasn't merely marketing. The smaller process gives performance and efficiency benefits, as demonstrated by the entire history of semiconductor technology, and N3B was simply the first 3 nm process that TSMC was able to produce commercially. You've got to start somewhere.
Because we have already talked that nobody is going to use N3B and after A17, everything will go in N3E/N3P way. Otherwise nobody disputes the benefits of 3nm vs 4nm (5nm).
If wasn't Apple, I'm thinking who tho? nVidia are releasing their next GPU gen (Blackwell) by the end of 2024 at earliest. And It should be on N3E.
That's just saying N3B/A17 won't be around for long. It does not support your claim that you won't be able to see the capabilities of 3 nm with N3B on A17 (particularly since A17 was likely designed for N3B).
