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TSMC Expected to Begin 'A14' 5nm Chip Production in Second Quarter

maflynn said:
The last time I checked these baby mobile chips are performing as fast as those real chips :rolleyes:

What's silly is quick dismissiveness of apple's innovation
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Apple designs chips they don't make them so the credit for 5nm goes to the foundries like TSMC.

7 nm process - Wikipedia

wikipedia.org wikipedia.org

What's really silly is assume a single stat tells the whole story. Transistor density is what matters most. Intel's 10nm x86 is twice as dense as 10nm ARM & still more than 7nm ARM. While chip benchmarking is like dick measuring as it doesn't indicate actual performance in real world tasks.
 
CarlJ said:
Wow, 5nm is just nuts!

an interesting future awaits when Apple puts out the first Macs with A-series chips (likely not the same ones as go into the phones, since the power and thermal envelope are so much higher for a Mac than an iPhone).
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Just slap 8 A14s in there & call it a day! :)
 
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maflynn said:
5nm - wow, and Intel can't get to 10mn :oops:
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What TSMC calls "5nm" is probably about equivalent to Intel's "10nm."
TSMC plays name games with their geometries.

For example, Intel's 10nm geometry gets 100.76 million transistors per mm^2 while TSMC's 7nm gets 67 million transistors per mm^2.

TSMC likes to pretend they are way ahead when they are actually quite close while each dominates different areas (TSMC=mobile; Intel=server/desktop).

Intel's 10th-gen Comet Lake-S lineup will be providing up to 10 cores at over 5GHz while still at 14nm. You don't need small geometries for the fastest processors.
 
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evilmurries said:
Has a standard been set for measuring the nm of an architecture, or does each company still use it's own metric?
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No. As has been mentioned, Intel 10nm is similar to TSMC 7nm. They're really just telling you the minimum size of a feature on the chip. Not everything on a 10nm chip is actually 10nm in size.
 
5nm sounds small enough to fit in my  Watch. Lemme fetch my tape measure.

Why do the decreases have to be so (relatively) huge though? 10nm, 7nm, 5nm, 3nm?
7^2 being less than half of 10^2, for example.
 
warnergt said:
Intel's 10th-gen Comet Lake-S lineup will be providing up to 10 cores at over 5GHz while still at 14nm. You don't need small geometries for the fastest processors.
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Small geometries => lower power. The way Apple designs cooling for its laptops, they definitely need to minimize the heat loads.
 
confessJason said:
Because intel makes real chips, not baby mobile chip crap like Apple. Silly comparison.
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Intel also makes mobile chips, which is why you wouldn't compare an A13 to an i7-9900K. Apple's chips compare quite favorably, and beat many of Intel's mobile chips.
Bustycat said:
I don’t understand why many people here want Apple to use Ax chips in Macs because of Intel. AMD Ryzen is also a choice.
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Unfortunately, it really isn't. AMD still has issues with battery life. Performance is there finally, but in laptops there are other considerations.
 
Bustycat said:
I don’t understand why many people here want Apple to use Ax chips in Macs because of Intel. AMD Ryzen is also a choice.
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Apple being (mostly) in control of their proprietary silicon is a nice place to be in terms of performance, features, and roadmap. Apple using commodity devices that competitors also have access to means Apple's competitors can potentially be just a step away from parity.
 
Emanuel Rodriguez said:
Intel also makes mobile chips, which is why you wouldn't compare an A13 to an i7-9900K. Apple's chips compare quite favorably, and beat many of Intel's mobile chips.

Unfortunately, it really isn't. AMD still has issues with battery life. Performance is there finally, but in laptops there are other considerations.
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At least Ryzen chips are the superior choice for desktops now.
 
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Jerion said:
Macs at the performance-at-any-cost end, iPhones at the "use the efficiency to improve battery life" end. iPads in in the middle, with a particular focus on beefier GPU resources as per the AxX chips of years past. The iPhone variant could also live in self-contained AR/VR gear.

An interesting line of thought in my mind is: with an A14-based chip established across the iOS and macOS lineup, the philosophical distinction between Mac and iOS (or really the PC as a whole vs iPad) only comes down to the usage model. If I can have Affinity Photo on an iPad Pro, or I can have Affinity Photo on a MacBook Air -- for the same kind of money and performance -- then it's almost six of one, half-dozen of the other, and I'd just be choosing based on the environment in which I'd want to use the tools. The Mac would make sense for the desk, and the iPad would make sense for the balcony/coffee shop/couch/beach/plane. It almost becomes a lifestyle choice.

The traditional PC idea of sitting at a prepared workspace to get "stuck in" with a project isn't going anywhere -- and macOS has monumental compatibility and flexibility benefits for really complex work. But right now the conversation is still around the guts of the machine. It really ought to be around which style of device is best for what you want to do with the machine, and once we reach full parity I think that will be more of what we see in forums and tweets.
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I'm getting more and more used to using Files on the iPad Pro. It is still far easier and quicker to do real work on the Mac. But the iPad Pro is getting there. The last Files update was HUGE. It is finally ready for work in my opinion.
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citysnaps said:
Apple being (mostly) in control of their proprietary silicon is a nice place to be in terms of performance, features, and roadmap. Apple using commodity devices that competitors also have access to means Apple's competitors can potentially be just a step away from parity.
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Couldn't agree more. I've also wanted to see Apple move in this direction. From my own Geekbench scores it shows Apple's A-Series chips are ready. The problem I think it the GPU. Those are still not yet up to desktop standards. I wouldn't be surprised to see an A-Series chip, and some kind of accelerator to help apps like Final Cut Pro. And then the GPU performance we see on the iPad would be fine on the Mac. The games on the iPad are great already. It just might need something extra for things like FCP rendering.
 
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confessJason said:
Because intel makes real chips, not baby mobile chip crap like Apple. Silly comparison.
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So much ignorance displayed in a single post. Congratulations. As for chip crap ... that's exactly what Intel is producing right now while AMD steamrolls right over them.

oneMadRssn said:
TSMC is currently manufacturing 7nm x64 chips for AMD that are eating Intel's lunch.
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Yep.
 
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