for all the sturn und drang over this announcement, no one has quantified the differences between N3B and N3E. While there will surely be production differences for TSMC, it’s not clear that anyone will see a substantial difference when using one of these SOCs.
If N3B is a one-off why go through the cost and trouble of utilizing it then?
They already paid for it, they already pressed it.
You are confused. A16 was a stop gap chip.
You can be sure that it was not originally designed to be a one off, but, as good as the tools and simulations might be now, actual production often ends up turning out not exactly as planned. So they redesigned the newer process to work around the issues they discovered. Technology is a moving target and this is the best they could produce at that point in time. It’s like asking why Apple would make the iPhone 15 when the iPhone 16 is going to come out after.
A16 wasn't stop gap either, because at least the tech "N4P" was used widely by anyone + the chip itself did many things differently if you dig deeply. Meanwhile N3B will be one time use only, just by Apple and forgotten forever.
Yeah I fear things are going to be very rough.
On the other hand…various financial markets people are always predicting a recession/depression/apocalypse(!)-for-us. Sure, eventually, some/one of them will be right, because, yeah, someday we will have a slowdown. That’s in the nature of our economies. And there are people who would like to see a recession/crash, because it’s a ‘buying opportunity.’ Meaning when people lose their businesses or homes, assets can be bought at far less than they’re worth. And, our last recession (2008-11) was made by the actual financial market ‘leaders.’ They somehow forgot what Junk Bonds were back in the 80’s and revamped them for the real estate/mortgage debt markets.
This is a good breakdown on the added 3B cost (80%?) for a moderate performance increase vs 3E 36% cost increase at virtually the same performance level. I THINK I got that right LOL. Thanks for the link!View attachment 2222512I love it. The very first response (SenttoSchool) lays out why N3B was never long for this world as TSMC is completely abandoning it after finding issues with yields. It’s the reason why TSMC introduced N3E in the first place.
Apple will likely be the ONLY high volume purchaser of N3B, so it makes no sense from either TSMC or Apple’s business plans to continue that fab process, it will die.
THAT is the reason for the switch. This being MR however, the hot takes about greed, Tim Cook, shareholders, etc have to take their moment.
TSMC is winding down N3B in the future, NOBODY will be able to use it.
For those interested in the topic:
May have been corroborated by other sources, but they were all wrong - the USB-C port isn't hobbled in any way.
By buying up as much Apple product as possible. 😀
I read through the tea leaves of the technologically illiterate tech “journalists”.
