It’s not easy Or cheap. Most have to partner with others to build a new fab; takes many billions and several years. Look at AMD.
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iPhone 14 Pro and Redesigned MacBook Air Reportedly Stuck Using Technology Behind A15 Chip
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While I do get the analogy, I can’t help but to think it misses the point.
Disclaimer; I’m very much into tech, but not wealthy enough to go out and by the latest and greatest every year.
When I bought my iPhone 7 Plus, I went “all in”, but that’s also my current phone and it’s beginning to show some age. The battery life is getting worse and a lot more apps chugs along.
My use case haven’t changed that much, so why upgrade until it’s absolutely necessary?
When car makers upgrade their engines it’s usually performance and/or efficiency - not unlike smartphone SoCs I suppose.
But unlike the SoCs, the roads generally don’t change that much and/or the hills don’t get steeper and steeper every year.
Your daily commute might change, but that’ll also be an opportunity to reconsider your transportation.
And yes, there’s also those who must have the latest and greatest when it comes to cars as well I suppose.
Does anyone else read these chip rumors and think “screw the iPhone, it’s fast enough, get to the Mac chips, that’s where I need more” ?
somehow, the iphone SoC defines the next Mac chips...so...
M2 could be minor but maybe the Mac Pro just uses two M1 Ultras.
So the Ultra is still the “last”
I think the future of APPLE is in trouble. Warren Buffet sells off APPLE and buys 5 Billion worth of HP.
finance.yahoo.com
Warren Buffett bought nearly $5 billion worth of HP shares — here's why you might want to ride his coattails
When Buffett buys, the market listens.
finance.yahoo.com
The M1 was based off the A14 so I would expect to see the M2 based off the A16.
Why does anyone take him at face value? Apple NEVER pre-announces products (Other than the Mac Pro). They have a history of releasing products they said they would never release. If they aren't ready to talk about it, its never going to exist until it does.
What a load of MacRumours FUD!
The iPhone 14 Pro's "A16" chip may be a minor upgrade over the iPhone 13's A15 Bionic and there are growing questions around the nature of the "M2" chip, according to reputable Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo.
Earlier this week, the leaker known as "ShrimpApplePro" postulated that the A16 chip for the iPhone 14 Pro models will be manufactured with the same process as the iPhone 13's A15 Bionic, with Apple potentially saving a bigger performance leap for M-series chips designed for its next-generation Macs instead. In a thread on Twitter quoting ShrimpApplePro, Kuo today corroborated these rumors about the A16 and M2 chips.
Kuo said that since TSMC's significantly better N3 and N4P fabrication processes will not be available for mass production until 2023, N5P and N4 are the latest viable technologies available for new Apple chips set to launch this year. Kuo believes that N4 has no meaningful advantages over N5P, the process currently used to manufacture the A15 Bionic chip in the iPhone 13 lineup and the iPad mini, so Apple reportedly plans to stick with N5P for the A16 chip. The A16 chip's performance and efficiency improvements over the A15 are therefore "limited," according to Kuo, leading to the claim that naming the iPhone 14 Pro's chip the "A16" is "more of a marketing purpose."
Kuo added that the redesigned MacBook Air, another device expected to launch this year, faces "the same technical limitations as A16" with N5P. He suggested that the 2022 MacBook Air's complete redesign is "already a big selling point," which may mean that boasting a major chip improvement could be less important for this device.
Instead, Kuo proposed that Apple may see more advantage in debuting the first M2 chips in the next-generation 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pro models. While Apple could call the chip in the redesigned MacBook Air the "M2" to boost sales, despite it only minor upgrades over the existing M1, it may opt to save the "M2" name for a much more substantial upgrade over the previous generation in 2023 to further enhance Apple silicon's brand image.
ShrimpApplePro previously claimed that Apple is working on the "final SoC of M1 series," featuring updated cores. The M1, M1 Pro, M1 Max, and M1 Ultra chips use energy-efficient "Icestorm" cores and high-performance "Firestorm" cores – just like the A14 Bionic chip. Apple's final M1 variant will instead allegedly be based on the A15 Bionic, featuring "Blizzard" energy-efficient cores and "Avalanche" high-performance cores.
Kuo said earlier this year that the 2022 MacBook Air would retain the M1 chip rather than feature the M2, so it is possible that ShrimpApplePro's rumor relates to a new version of the entry-level M1. Offering devices with a mid-generation iteration of the standard M1 chip could help Apple buy time before releasing Macs with the M2 chip.
Based on this information, it may be the case that the "true" M2 chip does not emerge until 2023, with the chips in upcoming devices like the iPhone 14 Pro and redesigned MacBook Air bearing a strong resemblance to the A15. Moreover, the standard iPhone 14 models are rumored to retain the same A15 chip from the iPhone 13 lineup. As a result, 2022 may be a year of more minor, iterative Apple chip upgrades, with bigger upgrades on the horizon for 2023 thanks to the availability of more advanced fabrication processes.
Article Link: iPhone 14 Pro and Redesigned MacBook Air Reportedly Stuck Using Technology Behind A15 Chip
No, Apple was sick of Intel flat-out not releasing chips that worked for the devices (Macs) they wanted to build.
That doesn't mean Apple was shooting for Macs to be updated more often (although they likely would like them updated predictably - e.g. be able to launch a new MacBook Air at the March event for school graduation purchasing)
There's been three more M1 chips since then.
Chip manufacturing process research and deployment? Pretty risky and expensive. TSMC has a half trillion market cap and thats all they do. Not to mention the possibility of screwing up - Intel has had to face failed process roll-outs for years now.
The reason companies like AMD and Nvidia farm that work off to TSMC now is that the costs for improving chip manufacturing have gone up exponentially over time. You need tremendous revenue (and thus tremendous volume) to fund the creation of new processes and the opening of new factories that use those processes.
Its also somewhat independent of chip design - TSMC having a better process may give power efficiency or performance for similar designs, but Apple is still responsible in house for actual design improvements year over year.
No _process_ changes. The SoC could still be substantially different.
You don't release each version of a chip on a new process. In fact, there are advantages of a tick/tock strategy, where you (mostly) adapt an existing design to a new process in one release, then adapt a new architecture onto that existing process in the next release.
The M series has a lot of design limitations which could be worked out with architecture and manufacturing process improvements. Examples include being able to scale up chips in a non-uniform manner - like doubling GPU cores without requiring double the CPU cores and the system memory. Or, supporting additional system memory in laptops which can't support the highest-end CPUs for power efficiency reasons.
Apple is going to be limited in being able to adopt new processes by yield issues for their (gigantic) chips, so adopting additional substrate technologies like what AMD uses for chipsets could help quite a bit too.
One of the main reason for Apple choosing to switch from Intel X86 to Apple ARM is Intel had been beaten by TSMC; and it proved wise seeing the boost of energy/performance ratio never heard of.
It's similar to that it firstly tried TSMC's A8 chip in iPhone 6 and then switch entirely to TSMC from Samsung since A9 in iPhone 6s after it was proved that TSMC had sensible advantage in energy/performance ratio over Samsung.
Apple had long cease manufacturing. Next, building a fab by itself is not a good idea unless you build it in Taiwan and give it to TSMC for daily running (to compete with TSMC). Why bother?
Actually that can happen. And you forgot the (new) notch.
The word "stuck" really does a lot of heavy lifting in the headline and article
Top 2 supercomputers powered by HP Processors. none powered by Apple Silicon.
www.yahoo.com
US retakes first place from Japan on Top500 supercomputer ranking
The United States is on top of the supercomputing world in the Top500 ranking of the most powerful systems.
www.yahoo.com
Forget the A series, the big news for the iPhone14 is moving to Qualcomm's X65 modem chip. That chip is 4nm and will offer better connectivity performance, features, and battery savings (a greater impact than an A chip die shrink). I'm more excited about a better modem, since I have ZERO issues with CPU/GPU performance on my iPhone12Pro, but I do have issues with connectivity (iPhone12 uses the X55 and iPhone13 uses the X60).
Since cutting edge chip fabrication is limited and or delayed, save the 'nm shrink' for the Mac bound chips - where people are actually doing tasks like 5k video editing, 3d rendering, etc... tasks NO one is doing on a phone.
Since cutting edge chip fabrication is limited and or delayed, save the 'nm shrink' for the Mac bound chips - where people are actually doing tasks like 5k video editing, 3d rendering, etc... tasks NO one is doing on a phone.
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Ah … no. Apple is possibly the best investment you can make. First off Buffet’s BH fund’s largest single holding is Apple. Second he is late to the game, never understood technology, and still doesn’t. The decision to buy Apple was not his. HP is NOT a good investment - my guess is that it is a short term play based on insider information plus market manipulation (Every time a BH large position is announced the stock price pops - he could be buying dog shxt and the price would go up).I think the future of APPLE is in trouble. Warren Buffet sells off APPLE and buys 5 Billion worth of HP.
Warren Buffett bought nearly $5 billion worth of HP shares — here's why you might want to ride his coattails
When Buffett buys, the market listens.
If they have any integrity they'll be calling them something along those lines ... ok who are we kidding they'll call them A16 and M2.