Comment by lysace
Comment by lysace 5 days ago
Made using which process? The article doesn't mention this.
https://www.tsmc.com/english/dedicatedFoundry/technology/log...
Comment by lysace 5 days ago
Made using which process? The article doesn't mention this.
https://www.tsmc.com/english/dedicatedFoundry/technology/log...
So which device will these be for then? I thought Apple stuff are always on the cutting edge node.
Their new stuff is. The iPad mini just moved from the A15 to the A17, The first MacBook with Intel processors had access to a bin that was not generally available yet. The yield was too low for it to work for an IBM, a Sony, or a Fujitsu. But Apple was low volume and high margin.
If I was nervous about a new fab, there’s the iPhone SE, the Apple TV, lots of choices for a less aggressive manufacturing node and less aggressive sales figures. If yield is shit you can still offer a product that isn’t killed by its own success.
I wonder if Apple Intelligence is forcing them to create new chips for things like the SE and TV instead of using old chips which I think they’d usually do.
I'm a long time AAPL shareholder, admittedly I have not been paying super close attention over the last couple of years. But I'm pretty sure Apple has a history of being perfectly fine with their entry level devices being one killer feature behind the rest of their fleet. If the old hardware can support it fine, and if not then better luck next time (literally and figuratively).
They don't usually do it for very long, and my recollection is that they usually bring it down market before (maybe concurrent with) introducing yet another new killer feature.
So you'll be correct soon enough, but there's slack time there that they can use to hedge their bets on the new fab before leaning on it for the WWDC keynote.
I thought Taiwan prohibited export of this kind of know-how? What did I miss?
They have adopted a n-2 type of rule for advanaced tech...but as of yesterday they seem to have relaxed this rule and approved transfer of 2nm from Taiwan fabs to the AZ fab at some point in the near future.
https://www.extremetech.com/computing/tsmc-cleared-for-2nm-p...
Advanced lithography is like if a mystery cult were real: Secret knowledge only understood by the most learned initiates, tightly-guarded process, etching symbols that do things...
Sadly true.
Even more depressing: it's like a very complicated baking recipe arrived at by tweaking parameters over and over a again. There is no deep understanding... just a giant list of baking parameters that seem to work, sometimes.
(Yes, a bit like an AI. Hmm....)
Wow I did not know this and it is fantastic news, surprised Taiwan allowed this as they see chips as being the most important reason America would intervene if they were invaded.
The smallest process they've got up and running right now is 4nm, last I checked