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Apple Reportedly Refuses to Accept TSMC Chip Price Hike
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Yes I have; my wife has one and when last I looked it was not a desk-top machine
The Mac Studio is pretty good with the 6 Thunderbolt ports..just a pity about the display and web cam.
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They don't really have a choice. TSMC is the only game in town. It's ironic that Apple makes huge profits but they don't want to pay for the cutting edge chips, which require massive investments. They look like crybabies. They will back down because they are under tremendous pressure to stay ahead of Intel with their Apple silicon chips. Otherwise they are toast.
I have read that Apple actually funds a lot of TSMC's R&D expenditure in exchange to be first in line for the latest and greatest manufacturing processes. Surely this would factor into TSMC's negotiation strategy? Surely you would not want to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs?
TSMC is at capacity.
If Apple balks, then they will sell the wafers to someone else.
No matter what people think, with fab capacity constrained TSMC is in the driver seat.
I'm sure AMD, Qualcomm and others will love the extra capacity.
Apple might not pay the full 20%, but there will be a price increase.
All nodes? Mediatek rolled out Dimensity 9000 on TSMC N4 several months before Apple got to A16 N4 . It is a 'midcycle' increment but all of these nodes feedback into the next generations. Nvidia announced 4N about the time Apple shipped but for much larger dies ( with likely longer test and validation queues. ).
If talking solely about the initial node family target N7 , N5 , N3 then that isn't exclusively true either. Before they got pushed aside HiSilicon (Hauwei) would get onto initial nodes early also. Not exactly Apple's volume but putting R&D wafers through and likely going through the feedback process like Apple. Intel dropped out of high volume production, but their initial 'at risk' N3 wafers would provide feedback also. TSMC works with Arm on their reference designs.
The volume pipe cleaning , yes Apple has done more than their fair share. Getting TSMC to the HVM (high volume manufacture status status), but the relatively early R&D I don't see how it would generally useful for TSMC to exclude 75% of the long term users from that. It is a bit overblown to characterize that all of the rest of TSMC customers are clueless until Apple does all the work. Apple makes contributions. So do other folks.
And vice versa. Other customers aren't waiting until just barely 6 months before lauch and tossing a design over the fence either. For larger dies the test and eval cycle is just plain longer ( likely contributing factor as to why the M1 Max didn't launch at the same time as the M1. They are in two different classifications of size. )
The only space were Apple probably has a bigger outsides contribution is in pre-payment for capital equipment acquisition. If Apple 'pays' for ASML machines upfront they could get an offset on wafer processing charges and TSMC doesn't have to borrow as much to get the equipment. Apple is more like a 'investment bank' role there than R&D partner though.
Back when Apple's SoC product catalog was much narrower I think they were doing some deeper path finding than now. M2 is on N5P which was a over a year old by the SoC's release date. That isn't bleeding edge work. A bunch of claims that the M2 Pro is N5P ... which again wouldn't be bleeding edge at all either. And N3 has been attracting some "this has major issues" commentary and a growing pool of folks waiting until N3E to jump in.
According to several reports actually not as much planned as rolling into the start of 2023 at the bleeding edge node. Intel is trying to time shift major blocks of N3 to 2-3 quarters later. Nvidia feeling the cryptocraze in GPUs collapsing is now trying to "slow roll' some 4N orders. ( Although if it is to make a buck to avoid supercomputer sanctions .. express ordering a bunch of H100s.
https://www.tomshardware.com/news/nvidia-tsmc-rush-orders-before-china-sanctions )
The glut of used GPUs pouring onto the market and tighter disposable income budgets is going to take lots of steam off the next gen GPU sales. That is going to open up some capacity.
The older fab nodes where car companies and other consumer electronics companies cancelled and refiled orders ... that queue is going to be a hot mess for a while longer.
Where they had accurate forecasting they are. But the part in the thread's original article about customers mucking around with placeholder orders that they will now 'flake on' , there are capacity bubbles around. I suspect that is what Apple is grumbling about. TSMC wanting Apple to order "sooner rather than later" to help with the gap/bubble filling . Apple wanting a 'discount' to help them out. Largely because Apple didn't really do that. Mainly took delivery from what they forecast, so why pay more if others were the "problem customers".
Apple can juggle. The plain iPhone chip can be tossed into an iPad , appletv , iPhone SE etc. so they have places to put 'excess' A-series chips if need be. Similar for the plain M1/M2 iPad Air/Pro,Mini,MBA,MBP 13 , and iMac 24. If there are 'extra' pile lying around just spread the SoC upgrades out faster. If not enough just slow the rollout across the products.
Depends which node. If it is way too much N3 wafer capacity and AMD and Qualcomm have no N3 designs queued up then that is a problem. Likewise if GM and need 16nm not going to help either.
A contract fabrication house like TSMC should have some flexibity within a 'family' of related nodes to shift the blend somewhat. Some production tools are going to be common across the family and those can be share allocated. But the oldest and newest nodes are going to be much less flexible.
Wait, I don’t get the downvotes… on my side, consuming less -boosted in part thanks to COVID lockdowns (zero things to do, zero travel, zero restaurants/bars/clubs)- was a blessing in disguise: the newfound free time was filled with exercising, the outside snacks with healthy food (some quick meat and easy quick sides in general like brocoli), the gas/booze/gatherings/restaurant savings in ever increasing financial security.
Such a deal that I just continued that merry way. At least to date -knocking on wood- haven’t felt the perils of inflation like everybody around me have been visibly (and understandably) trying to surmount.
Gotta agree with you here, and to the downvoters, he isn’t saying to eat lettuce and drink water and sleep on a tent daily… he just saying that there’s the option to choose to consume less. Me personally I find it easier to shave off $1K of expenses (tiny apartment, cleaned debts, no kids, no party nights, don’t even buy milk as I realize that I don’t need it) than to try to gain a salary raise of $1K after taxes. On one you have direct immediate control, but not on the other.
But it’s also understandable if that choice can’t be made. And it is by no means a solution, but trust you me that if you can, life hardships go on a whole lot easier mode… and I’m far from being rich, I live in Canada where salaries are considerably lower than in the US and the government has a knack for parting ways with the half of said funny money.
Consumers are not a cohesive group. Unless you find a way to convince a significant number of people all to say no at the same time, it would not have a big enough impact to sway prices either way. There are a lot of things where cohesive action is theoretically possible and "need" to be done (and I agree what you're proposing would be a good outcome) but simply won't happen en masse unless there is a fundamental shift that convinces a lot of people to change. If that can't happen the only way you can get to this outcome is price control (which is problematic in other ways).
That would be illegal anti-competitive behaviour here. I wouldn’t want to be pinged as a ringleader for this, that’s for sure.
Zero friends, fun memories or meaningful human connections (no, the people you argue with on macrumors don't count).
TSMC will be passed by both Samsung and Intel in the next couple of years. The former is already shipping more advanced chipsets.
Almost a fair point, but ultimately snarky for free (and definitely not a friendly gesture), because equating consuming beyond available means with friends, memories and meaningful human connections…
Anyways, while “zero” is extreme, you can have a coffee with a meaningful couple of friends or go bar and restaurant hopping… the original poster presented it as “the choice to consume less”. Can’t have it all, having the fun memories traveling to remote places (yes, they can be fun, not denying that) comes with a price.
Stopping here as I derailed this, but the reaction after a very simple choice proposal prompt me to comment on it.
Oh no, you mean you have to go to work like most people? Oh the horror.
There will be a glut of chips soon, and you can already the effect of this starting in the GPU market (although the crypto crash also contributed quite a bit to that). Because everyone was asking for way more chips than typical last year after cancelling orders in 2020, TSMC had to expand capacity with the rest of the industry. Now it looks like that amount of output is no longer sustained by the demand. I’m guessing Apple is taking advantage of that to negotiate lower prices.
Apple Watch Ultra US price = $799.
Apple Watch Ultra Euro price = €999.
€999 = (at this moment) $981.42.
BREAKING: Apple customers refuse to accept Apple's product price hikes. Due to demand slump, Apple concedes and lowers iPhone prices back to $699 for it's most expensive model.
So you’re complaining that you chose a setup that would be untenable with market fluctuations rather than carefully living within your means while also preparing for said fluctuations and it didn’t play out as you had imagined. Okay.
This is freaking hilarious. Clearly you read none of my other comments. And I wasn’t complaining at all - merely stating that some people don’t have a choice whether they commute. Not everyone can live on top of their places of business, and not everyone can work from home. Perhaps you shouldn’t comment until you know the entire story, and why I made the comments in the first place.
Fact is, we don’t even pay for my husband’s gas, nor do we pay for his vehicle. However, when someone says to simply, “consume less,” how do they know you aren’t already consuming the least you can and doing the most you can with what you DO purchase?
Never actually related to my situation personally, although somehow it got twisted into that. Big surprise.
If Apple and Samsung work together (as Apple got alot of $$$$$), they can beat TSMC.
But not a chance Apple will do that.