Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Exciting, looking forward to see what Apple can do with this. Hopefully they've already started working on a way to go below this, as many consider 5nm the floor for traditional silicon chips...

But is it really? When people say 5nm they’re typically talking about the smallest feature. It doesn’t mean that the entire chip is at 5nm - a lot of items are significantly larger (like transistor gate pitch or interconnects).

Perhaps cmaier could chime in on this, but I imagine that even if 5nm was the smallest we could go that there’s still room for improvement by getting everything on the chip down to that size (if possible).
 
What would Apple do if Qualcomm buys TSMC.

That would cost apple arm and legs

I doubt regulators would allow that. With Qualcomm being found guilty of antitrust issues in several countries, I don’t think they’d be allowed to buy a major fab and gain so much control over several industries.
 
What would Apple do if Qualcomm buys TSMC.

That would cost apple arm and legs
There are other foundries out there. Apple designs the chips. Other fabs make them. They could go to any number of places. I work in the semiconductor industry.
 
I suspect that if there were a chance that Qualcomm were thinking of purchasing TSMC, Apple would hand over a blank check to TSMC and own the foundries themselves.
Much cheaper to just hire away the talent... Leaves Qualcomm with a bunch of cutting edge fabs and no one to run them.

But I doubt either company sees an advantage in acquisition here. TSMC is investing $28B in the 5nm process. Nobody wants to make a $28B capital investment to support products with volumes in the hundreds of millions. That would add a very risky $100 to the top line cost of each iPhone before they even turned the fab on to produce parts.

If Qualcomm bought the fab, they’d be eager to sell parts to Apple for the same reason Samsung always has— it offsets the fixed cost of the fab and is mutually beneficial.
Are you sure? I'm seeing TMSC only valued at around the $30Bn range. Either way I don't think QC would buy them.
Market cap looks like $207B right now.
 
Last edited:
I thought 7nm was about the limit before quantum tunneling would see electrons jumping through the substrate. I guess they've come up with a practical solution to that and I equally guess I'm a bit behind the times on this, heh.
 
Are you sure? I'm seeing TMSC only valued at around the $30Bn range. Either way I don't think QC would buy them.

A simple stock quote shows market cap around $207B today. Those can be wrongly calculated at times but other news stories seem in general agreement.

Apple could probably swing it for $300B or so but it would be the corporate takeover of all takeovers. TSMC is a massive company. Apple would have access to their silicon but they'd also have to run a company that is far more complex than just making A-series processors. They'd also be tied down to one mfg forever, which is not what they'd want.

It'd be easier to just pay exorbitant rates for exclusive access to new tsmc processes.
 
Intel always led the world on process. That’s what’s kept the x86 architecture alive more than anything else. I know there’s different ways of measuring process nodes, and 10nm nodes aren’t directly comparable, but this doesn’t bode well for Intel’s future that TSMC can keep advancing at this rate.

If Microsoft throws their weight behind ARM then Intel is in for some pain...
 
Its good then that the 5nm and 7nm is just pure marketing that does not correspond to any actual structure size (keep in mind that Intel 10nm is higher transistor density than TSMC 7nm), also, the floor is closer to 2nm (with ångström precision on the fin structure) and that is for CPP, TSMC 7nm has a CPP of 40nm, their 5nm process maybe will get down to 35nm, so its a long long long way down to 2nm CPP.

I have been wondering why Intel, other than their much better performance, hasn't been pushing the competition like AMD on these marketing schemes. For notebooks and desktops, Ice Lake (and if rumors are true, more so with Tiger Lake in 2020) will be revolutionary.
 
There are other foundries out there. Apple designs the chips. Other fabs make them. They could go to any number of places. I work in the semiconductor industry.
Since Global Foundries gave up on chasing 7nm, there aren’t many options afaik. Samsung is barely at 7nm, I’m not sure they could manufacture 5nm at volume 12-14 months from now, when Apple needs them.
 
Since Global Foundries gave up on chasing 7nm, there aren’t many options afaik. Samsung is barely at 7nm, I’m not sure they could manufacture 5nm at volume 12-14 months from now, when Apple needs them.
I don't know for certain. There are tons of semiconductor companies most people haven't heard of. Apple is one of our customers, our chips are in almost everything, I guarantee you own products with our chips, and I doubt anyone has heard of us. Though we can't produce anything close to 7nm let alone 5nm.
Even the big guys, intel, AMD, will use foundries too even though they own their own fabs.
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: Glideslope
Oh yay, a synthetic benchmark...

How can you compare it against real world applications? Oh wait, you can't, because they don't exist in iOS world.

Please give some examples of “real world applications” that “don’t exist in iOS world”.

I realize this is all irrelevant to the article, but you’ve aroused my curiosity.
 
2020 is going to be the year to upgrade
[doublepost=1554739201][/doublepost]
Hopefully Apple will have their own in-house 5G modems by 2021

That’s the vibe I’m getting. 2019 seems like it will be a minor spec bump and a 3rd camera lens and that’s it on the hardware side.

I’m guessing the A14 will be a huge jump in performance, we’ll get true 5G and likely new chassis design all around. 2020 is shaping up to be a doozy. That’s when I will take the plunge to upgrade.
 
Its good then that the 5nm and 7nm is just pure marketing that does not correspond to any actual structure size (keep in mind that Intel 10nm is higher transistor density than TSMC 7nm), also, the floor is closer to 2nm (with ångström precision on the fin structure) and that is for CPP, TSMC 7nm has a CPP of 40nm, their 5nm process maybe will get down to 35nm, so its a long long long way down to 2nm CPP.

You just spoke over the head of everyone on this thread except me and about 6 other people that understand semiconductor physics. You know that, right?

Most people hear 14nm, 10 nm, 7nm etc. and assume that all features have scaled and that there is a hard fast rule for defining geometries and how things fit together.

I know that Intel 10nm is equivalent or better than TSMC 7nm in density.

Going from 7nm to 5nm may mean active/switching power is lower but it may also mean that leakage is higher.

They are in risk/alpha production.
Mainstream by 2020? Maybe, depends on how dialing in the process works.
Until they run some real chips and some skew lots to see where the rubber really meets the roads, I'll wait.

They completed their DRM (Design Rule Manual), SPICE simulation and Process Design Kits (PDK).
I'm not taking anything away, but before I jump on the bandwagon I need to see real silicon and real yields.
I still remember TSMC 40nm to 28nm pain.
 
  • Like
Reactions: JohnnyGo
“Just” seems a little harsh, I’m not a chip making expert but New smaller fab processes seem to cost billions, I doubt apples chip investment is anywhere near as much
I’m not minimizing TSMC’s contribution, but Apple designs the chips and has correctly not gotten into the capital intensive chip making business.

Apple uses suppliers for components, affording them the ability to be more nimble and put the capital risk on someone else. Really, the best position.
 
I thought 7nm was about the limit before quantum tunneling would see electrons jumping through the substrate. I guess they've come up with a practical solution to that and I equally guess I'm a bit behind the times on this, heh.

Remember the transistor is no longer mostly flat on the substrate and looks a lot like a skyscraper.
Fin-FET changed the game.

Also 7nm or 5nm defines smallest feature not every feature.
 
  • Like
Reactions: eoblaed
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.