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Innovation? It is not about innovation at all, not at least at TMSC side. The only thing TMSC did was to buy the equipment required to fabricate at 10nm, then at 5nm and in the future at 3nm. Surprisingly, there is only one company in the world that makes the machines that makes these chips and TMSC bought everything. TMSC a is pure manufacturer, they are not designing the chips, nor the equipment they use to manufacture the end product. The only merit TMSC has is that it was able to sign the right agreement with the right company at the right moment.
Yeah, right. Buy a machine and push the button and out come the chips...
Hardly. To use the equipment for 3nm is a scientific field of its own. There is a lot of material science to make 3nm chip.
 
That would be nice if true, but AMD bought Nuvia headed by the former Apple Silicon designer. Their chips boast the same performance as Apple’s M1’s naturally.
Apple is in no position to be cocky as the competition is only waking up, and the market for non Apple computers is far greater.
Competition is already nipping at Apple’s heels.
Competition is always nipping at your heels. That what drives innovation.
 
That, in and of itself, is a sort of achievement. TSMC has resisted the urge to compete against Apple, so as not to rock that apple cart. If TSMC were to start designing their own chips and SOC's to sell to Apple's competitors, you would see Apple start to reduce orders from them.

As it stands, I'm sure Apple has contingency plans in case that happens. Heck, Apple might do it anyway, just to bring as much of the widget production in house.
I didnt said it is not an achievement. Im simply saying TSMC did not innovate anything, because they did not design the chips they manufacture, they did not design or manufacture their own machinery and tools, they did not invent the technology behind the manufacturing process. All these things were designed and build by other companies.
 
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As it stands right now, it seems with existing technology and known physics, it’s doubtful we will get past 3nm without facing major problems with quantum tunneling.

Quantum tunneling. Problems just don't get any classier that this.
 
That would be nice if true, but AMD bought Nuvia headed by the former Apple Silicon designer. Their chips boast the same performance as Apple’s M1’s naturally.
Apple is in no position to be cocky as the competition is only waking up, and the market for non Apple computers is far greater.
Competition is already nipping at Apple’s heels.
AMD didn’t buy nuvia. Qualcomm did.

And nuvia doesn’t have “the” former Apple silicon designer. It has a couple of people from the team. One of whom used to work for me at AMD for a project or two, and with me on a project or two. Nuvia has no chips that actually exist so we have no idea how fast their chip would have been.
 
I didnt said it is not an achievement. Im simply saying TSMC did not innovate anything, because they did not design the chips they manufacture, they did not design or manufacture their own machinery and tools, they did not invent the technology behind the manufacturing process. All these things were designed and build by other companies.

Nope. Tsmc had to design the process. The order of the steps, and what steps to perform, are no small feat. Otherwise anyone could have bought the same equipment and competed.

Example from when AMD had their own fab - they bought the same machines as Intel but couldn’t keep up. They had a leakage problem so they added a nitride layer. Then the nitride layer caused a capacitance problem so they increased a layer thickness. That caused a wire cross capacitance problem so they adjusted the interconnect alloy. That caused an electro migration problem. Etc etc. Not to mention what is required to be able to use these machines to get decent yield. It takes hundreds of engineers to design the process.
 
How much speed/power consumption is necessary for Apple to build wearable devices that are extremely powerful yet have very low power draw? Are the smaller nanometer chips just for macs or could they tweak the process to create watch and glasses with them too? It just seems the smaller these things get the smaller the devices they can fit in can be.
 
Yeah, right. Buy a machine and push the button and out come the chips...
Hardly. To use the equipment for 3nm is a scientific field of its own. There is a lot of material science to make 3nm chip.
I did not say it is a matter of pushing a button. There are quite a lot of fine tuning, optimization and know how behind the manufacturing process, but claiming that the TSMC is innovating by it own, is not true.

 
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I did not say it is a matter of pushing a button. There are quite a lot of fine tuning, optimization and know how behind the manufacturing process, but claiming that the TSMC is innovating by it own, is not true.


This is so insane. Buying a stepper is useless unless you’ve designed a process.
 
How much speed/power consumption is necessary for Apple to build wearable devices that are extremely powerful yet have very low power draw? Are the smaller nanometer chips just for macs or could they tweak the process to create watch and glasses with them too? It just seems the smaller these things get the smaller the devices they can fit in can be.

The chips can be used in any device. Of course, switching to a smaller node (3nm) doesn’t necessarily mean the chips, themselves, are any smaller.
 
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How much speed/power consumption is necessary for Apple to build wearable devices that are extremely powerful yet have very low power draw? Are the smaller nanometer chips just for macs or could they tweak the process to create watch and glasses with them too? It just seems the smaller these things get the smaller the devices they can fit in can be.
Do you mean like the SoCs used in the Apple Watch? Or did you have something else in mind?

Either way, I'll bet we find out if/when the Apple AirTags ever get released... :cool:
 
Innovation? It is not about innovation at all, not at least at TMSC side. The only thing TMSC did was to buy the equipment required to fabricate at 10nm, then at 5nm and in the future at 3nm. Surprisingly, there is only one company in the world that makes the machines that makes these chips and TMSC bought everything. TMSC a is pure manufacturer, they are not designing the chips, nor the equipment they use to manufacture the end product. The only merit TMSC has is that it was able to sign the right agreement with the right company at the right moment.


This is so naive, misleading and false, the statement is almost not worth responding to.

ASML makes the machines that TSMC uses to manufacture chips. Those same machines are used by Intel and Samsung and yet, both companies are falling behind TSMC's capabilities. And oh yeah, Burn Lin, former VP at TSMC, is one of the fathers of immersion lithography which has been key to most of the recent manufacturing advancements until EUV came online in the last couple years. That's just one example, albeit a big one.

Creating the process for any particular layer on the chip requires a great deal of innovation. Saying otherwise is simply dumb.
 
This is so naive, misleading and false, the statement is almost not worth responding to.

ASML makes the machines that TSMC uses to manufacture chips. Those same machines are used by Intel and Samsung and yet, both companies are falling behind TSMC's capabilities. And oh yeah, Burn Lin, former VP at TSMC, is one of the fathers of immersion lithography which has been key to most of the recent manufacturing advancements until EUV came online in the last couple years. That's just one example, albeit a big one.

Creating the process for any particular layer on the chip requires a great deal of innovation. Saying otherwise is simply dumb.

That chef didn’t do anything! She just bought a fancy oven!
That photographer wasn’t innovative - the credit goes to Nikon!
 
next step on everything on a chip
a chip to detect any pirated media and software
WATCH. I already know it exists.
It's coming.
 
I’m sure they’ve thought about this a while back, will be interesting to see what happens when that time arrives.

TSMC recently signed a deal with University of Tokyo and established a new Japanese facility to research advanced materials & 3DIC (a new packaging technique). The Japanese are probably onto something that TSMC is interested in.
 
Already mentioned ijn another thread, but hey, again:


not gonna protect Intel for „slouching“ around vs the competition, but could please EVERYONE here going like : „duh Intel is so behind - they are still on 14nm++++++ - they must be the dum.... company on the planet“ please back off.

7 vs 10 vs 14 nm has NOTHING to do wit Transistor size (anymore). It is simply just a remnant of earlier times and the „nm“ term is only used to name generational jumps/improvements. Whether it is a declining number (14-10-7-5-3....) or gen 1,2,3,4,5, or just simply adding (those friggin ) „++++“ -it simply doesn‘t matter anymore.

For clarification: Der 8auer actually took Intel and AMD under „a“ microscope - and guess what: Size and evolution DOES not really differ - so please bash Intel otherwise/correctly.

Video part 1:
Video part 2:
Video part 3:

Enjoy learning about „14“ vs „7“ nm
 
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I think you meant to say that Qualcomm purchased Nuvia, not AMD. And their plan is to use the technology to speed up their special purpose processors like those used in their modems.

I have no doubt that AMD, Intel, and others are strategizing and working toward better performance, but I think that for the next 2-3 years Apple will have the lead. And even if you're not a MacOS/iOS user that's fine. Competition is always good and Intel and AMD make some damn fine processors. In the meantime, companies like Microsoft are hedging their bets and looking at making their own M1-style chips rather than waiting on Intel.

And speed isn't everything. I like playing on my Nintendo Switch just as much as the PS5.
Yes you’re right. I got them mixed up!
 
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