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I'm not a big fan of this article. It doesn't 'work out well for everyone' that AMD are a node behind Apple. In fact with Apple moving into more general compute

I'm not a big fan of this article. It doesn't 'work out well for everyone' that AMD are a node behind Apple. In fact with Apple moving into more general compute I would say it's less 'work out well for everyone' and more 'existential threat'. Also, the shift from desktop CPUs to mobile CPUs as leading the shift to smaller nodes sounds less like a massive revelation, and more like the innevitable result of mobile CPUs out-stripping traditional CPUs in volume & margin.

uluyol 6y ago
Most companies wait until a node matures / a second gen version is offered. Defect rate for example can be high which makes it too expensive to use for larger processors.
SllX 6y ago
As mentioned in other comments, Apple works out deals with some of their suppliers where they will purchase or help purchase the equipment and book its future production. If it’s the same type of deal here, then this is Apple putting their money where their mouth is. If it makes sense for other companies to adopt these kinds of financial arrangements, they will eventually, and while it works out best for Apple here, at this particular point in time, this is just one point in time. It does benefit others in the long run as TSMC is able to refine their process fabbing chips for Apple and will be able to open new production lines in the future with the profits from manufacturing for Apple and offer those to their other customers. AMD is still doing really well in the market, and their customers are different and their more direct competition is Intel and NVIDIA. Could they make better products on a 5nm process size? We assume they can and will, maybe that will happen a little later than they would like, or maybe they’re working behind the scenes and making their own deals with other manufacturers that we don’t know about yet. This isn’t the bad old days where Intel was completely dominant, competition actually is good here. Apple is ahead right now, but that’s a temporary situation much like anything else.
- teruakohatu 6y ago
  The rumors were that 5mn was going to take a lot of work and so AMD delayed until their following CPU architecture iteration Zen4. Now it seems more likely that they were outbid by Apple which is why Zen3 is stuck on the older process. The risk for AMD is if they can get 5mn or equivalent from another fab for Zen4
  - SllX 6y ago
    And that sucks for them at this point in time, but it’s just business, and business has risks. Apple does a lot to mitigate risks to their business, and if AMD really was outbid, then that just means AMD probably also tried to mitigate as much risk to their business as they could, but they clearly didn’t mitigate it enough. At this point in time, this is the situation, but no one here should expect this to remain the situation in perpetuity. From what I heard, prior to this, Apple and AMD were jointly buying up all of or almost all of TSMC’s 7nm fab capacity. AMD has risen from the the dirt, and then later again from the ashes and is presently making the best x86_64 chips you can buy today. I’m actually disappointed Apple didn’t try to shop around for the 2019 Mac Pro CPU because they could have gotten much better all-around parts buying the equivalents from AMD for less and with lower power consumption. Ah well, can’t win them all.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - happycube 6y ago
      I think Apple's playing a longer game - if they weren't planning to move to their own ARM cores, they could have designed custom SOCs with AMD ala the game consoles.
      - SllX 6y ago
        That’s fair enough, I figured by the time they were designing the Mac Pro they were already planning to move to ARM. Would have been nice to see EPYC in the 2019 model, but it is understandable why that didn’t happen.
    - 6y ago
delfinom 6y ago
It's just a fud article that's simping to glorify Apple as an almighty company. AMD already has 5nm capacity booked with TSMC but for this year. The reality is AMD isn't ready to go 5nm just yet. They have yet to even launch the 7nm Zen 3 Ryzens and have at least a year until they would want to even start phasing in initial 5nm products.
- josephg 6y ago
  Right. And I’m sure a lot of the money pouring into TSMC will be reinvested into increasing their 5nm capacity and yields. In a year or two I’m sure we’ll see AMD move to 5nm as well, and TSMC have capacity for everyone. And if they don’t, Samsung isn’t far behind. This is the kind of situation market dynamics excel at. The next few years of CPUs in all our devices are going to be fantastic.
- dralley 6y ago
  Zen 2 was on 7nm, though.
hinkley 6y ago
It's interesting the ways we qualify 'fairness' when talking about capitalism. In practice, I suspect these sorts of situation arise far more frequently than we think. One party overpays for a supply of an ingredient and then controls demand by leveraging it. In the first act, they convince people that they need things made with this ingredient. In the second, they bank on the cachet, the exclusivity, driving demand even higher. But at the end of the day, someone is playing a chess match where in theory the customer could have had more options and now they don't. Or they could have had no options at all. We don't have a time machine so who can say? Apple went farther in a number of situations by investing in suppliers in order to guarantee that they could produce an ingredient in the first place, either at all, or in a timely fashion. We are going to enable you to make a product, and then we are going to ask for special treatment for having done so. Which means, for instance, that Intel may be able to field an equivalent ultralight notebook using the same supplier, but Apple made higher profit margins on the same product (although the manufacturer makes higher profits on the Intel version). I don't have any illusions that they will continue with this level of benevolence in the future, especially after Tim (or indeed even as Tim's memory of Steve fades). I don't even know if they are still working that way now. Probably not, or not for long. At any rate, R&D frequently is paid for by luxury goods of one form or another. Like it or not, Apple is nearly the only luxury computing maker out there, though Samsung, Sony and LG dabble. I've expressed my confusion on a number of occasions as to why things are this way, given that it's not the case with cars or a number of other goods. I like Apple products and am an investor, but I'd also like to have more opportunities to compare them to a competitor. Hyundai has figured out they need a separate luxury brand, as have a number of car makers before them. Maybe Sony, Samsung and LG need their own 'Genesis', 'Audi', "Acura". My last example was not a case of 'poor Intel, can't sell because of a licensing agreement'. They were probably wiping their tears away with 100 dollar bills. TSMC is probably pretty happy with this arrangement too. The way they 'get out' of this exclusivity is to produce more chips than Apple cares to buy, since it's probably Right of First Refusal, not 'you can make no more than N million chips per month or else'.
rgbrenner 6y ago
Apple will never be an existential threat unless they make a drastic change to their strategy. They're a premium manufacturer that produces desktops and laptops that only run MacOS. Apple has chosen high profits and a locked down platform. They have one or two options to meet customer needs.. That lack of choice will always mean a substantial number of people will choose something else. If you get a PC, you get literally thousands of choices. It's a very similar situation with the iPhone. Apple makes a great phone in many respects, but they're one company and they can't meet the wide variety customers demand. That's reflected in their market share. It's also too early to say that Apple Silicon is a threat to anyone. Apple Silicon in the iPhone and iPad is a low power & low performance chip compared to AMD/Intel. They have a huge challenge scaling that up to compete on desktop. Their first chips are going into their lower performance products. I'm sure it'll be decent in that role, but Apple likely NEEDS 5nm just so that it makes a respectable showing compared to AMD/Intel.
- bigiain 6y ago
  > a premium manufacturer that produces desktops and laptops that only run MacOS Not sure that's been true for some time now. Wouldn't they be better described as "a premium manufacturer of mobile phones that run iOS with an app ecosystem they make 30% commission on, who also make legacy propitiatory laptop and desktop devices"? (I agree with the rest of your comment though. Apple _don't want_ 99% of Android or Windows customers, and are more than happy for Huawei and Oppo and AliExpress to sell phones and laptops to people Apple dont care about. They _might_ care a bit about encouraging top of the range Samsung or Pixel phone customers to iPhones, maybe. And they at least used to try to woo the dev/webdev crowd to macOS machines, but less obviously these days, it seems to me.)
- toxik 6y ago
  You are of course aware that Apple is soon selling computers with their own processors, I hope. I don’t think Apple is struggling with performance in their chips at all. > If you get a PC, you get literally thousands of choices. And none of them work reliably.
  - masklinn 6y ago
tengbretson 6y ago
I suspect Apple's chips have a much smaller overall die size, so the economics of the early 5nm defect rate might just make more sense for apple than amd.
- masklinn 6y ago
  Sources I find say that AMD’s chiplets are about 75mm2, while the A13 was about 100mm2. An other commenter theorised that Apple had simply outbid AMD for the production capacity.
kergonath 6y ago
Everyone will have access to that node in the near future, once more infrastructure is built and that processes become more efficient. Apple is not in competition with any CPU maker; I think "existential threat" is a bit overblown. Unless there is a revolution at Apple leadership, ARM Macs will remain a slice of the PC market. There will still be lots of room for others.
thesz 6y ago
The "node" or lambda is not all that important. It is a multiplication factor - you get sizes of parts in integer scales of node size. It allows for some parts of chip parts to be smaller. Most transistors stay about the same, because you cannot make them much smaller, otherwise they will leak or will not be as fast as needed. If you look for transition of the same company from lambda1 to smaller lambda2 you will see that gate or transistor density rises not as theoretical square of lambda1/lambda2, but as about lambda1/lambda2 or less. It is also quite possible to screw things at smaller lambdas. For example, NVidia get their process right for same lambda only after several years, they were fighting steady state leaks, power issues and the like. And NVidia, just like AMD and Apple, was using TSMC. So if you are pissed about AMD lagging behind a node, don't be. Being at forefront of node size does not mean instant success, lagging a node size step behind does not mean you will get much inferior product.

uluyol 6y ago

Most companies wait until a node matures / a second gen version is offered. Defect rate for example can be high which makes it too expensive to use for larger processors.

SllX 6y ago

As mentioned in other comments, Apple works out deals with some of their suppliers where they will purchase or help purchase the equipment and book its future production. If it’s the same type of deal here, then this is Apple putting their money where their mouth is. If it makes sense for other companies to adopt these kinds of financial arrangements, they will eventually, and while it works out best for Apple here, at this particular point in time, this is just one point in time. It does benefit others in the long run as TSMC is able to refine their process fabbing chips for Apple and will be able to open new production lines in the future with the profits from manufacturing for Apple and offer those to their other customers. AMD is still doing really well in the market, and their customers are different and their more direct competition is Intel and NVIDIA. Could they make better products on a 5nm process size? We assume they can and will, maybe that will happen a little later than they would like, or maybe they’re working behind the scenes and making their own deals with other manufacturers that we don’t know about yet. This isn’t the bad old days where Intel was completely dominant, competition actually is good here. Apple is ahead right now, but that’s a temporary situation much like anything else.

teruakohatu 6y ago
The rumors were that 5mn was going to take a lot of work and so AMD delayed until their following CPU architecture iteration Zen4. Now it seems more likely that they were outbid by Apple which is why Zen3 is stuck on the older process. The risk for AMD is if they can get 5mn or equivalent from another fab for Zen4
- SllX 6y ago
  And that sucks for them at this point in time, but it’s just business, and business has risks. Apple does a lot to mitigate risks to their business, and if AMD really was outbid, then that just means AMD probably also tried to mitigate as much risk to their business as they could, but they clearly didn’t mitigate it enough. At this point in time, this is the situation, but no one here should expect this to remain the situation in perpetuity. From what I heard, prior to this, Apple and AMD were jointly buying up all of or almost all of TSMC’s 7nm fab capacity. AMD has risen from the the dirt, and then later again from the ashes and is presently making the best x86_64 chips you can buy today. I’m actually disappointed Apple didn’t try to shop around for the 2019 Mac Pro CPU because they could have gotten much better all-around parts buying the equivalents from AMD for less and with lower power consumption. Ah well, can’t win them all.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - happycube 6y ago
    I think Apple's playing a longer game - if they weren't planning to move to their own ARM cores, they could have designed custom SOCs with AMD ala the game consoles.
    - SllX 6y ago
      That’s fair enough, I figured by the time they were designing the Mac Pro they were already planning to move to ARM. Would have been nice to see EPYC in the 2019 model, but it is understandable why that didn’t happen.
  - 6y ago

delfinom 6y ago

It's just a fud article that's simping to glorify Apple as an almighty company. AMD already has 5nm capacity booked with TSMC but for this year. The reality is AMD isn't ready to go 5nm just yet. They have yet to even launch the 7nm Zen 3 Ryzens and have at least a year until they would want to even start phasing in initial 5nm products.

josephg 6y ago
Right. And I’m sure a lot of the money pouring into TSMC will be reinvested into increasing their 5nm capacity and yields. In a year or two I’m sure we’ll see AMD move to 5nm as well, and TSMC have capacity for everyone. And if they don’t, Samsung isn’t far behind. This is the kind of situation market dynamics excel at. The next few years of CPUs in all our devices are going to be fantastic.
dralley 6y ago
Zen 2 was on 7nm, though.

hinkley 6y ago

It's interesting the ways we qualify 'fairness' when talking about capitalism. In practice, I suspect these sorts of situation arise far more frequently than we think. One party overpays for a supply of an ingredient and then controls demand by leveraging it. In the first act, they convince people that they need things made with this ingredient. In the second, they bank on the cachet, the exclusivity, driving demand even higher. But at the end of the day, someone is playing a chess match where in theory the customer could have had more options and now they don't. Or they could have had no options at all. We don't have a time machine so who can say? Apple went farther in a number of situations by investing in suppliers in order to guarantee that they could produce an ingredient in the first place, either at all, or in a timely fashion. We are going to enable you to make a product, and then we are going to ask for special treatment for having done so. Which means, for instance, that Intel may be able to field an equivalent ultralight notebook using the same supplier, but Apple made higher profit margins on the same product (although the manufacturer makes higher profits on the Intel version). I don't have any illusions that they will continue with this level of benevolence in the future, especially after Tim (or indeed even as Tim's memory of Steve fades). I don't even know if they are still working that way now. Probably not, or not for long. At any rate, R&D frequently is paid for by luxury goods of one form or another. Like it or not, Apple is nearly the only luxury computing maker out there, though Samsung, Sony and LG dabble. I've expressed my confusion on a number of occasions as to why things are this way, given that it's not the case with cars or a number of other goods. I like Apple products and am an investor, but I'd also like to have more opportunities to compare them to a competitor. Hyundai has figured out they need a separate luxury brand, as have a number of car makers before them. Maybe Sony, Samsung and LG need their own 'Genesis', 'Audi', "Acura". My last example was not a case of 'poor Intel, can't sell because of a licensing agreement'. They were probably wiping their tears away with 100 dollar bills. TSMC is probably pretty happy with this arrangement too. The way they 'get out' of this exclusivity is to produce more chips than Apple cares to buy, since it's probably Right of First Refusal, not 'you can make no more than N million chips per month or else'.

rgbrenner 6y ago

Apple will never be an existential threat unless they make a drastic change to their strategy. They're a premium manufacturer that produces desktops and laptops that only run MacOS. Apple has chosen high profits and a locked down platform. They have one or two options to meet customer needs.. That lack of choice will always mean a substantial number of people will choose something else. If you get a PC, you get literally thousands of choices. It's a very similar situation with the iPhone. Apple makes a great phone in many respects, but they're one company and they can't meet the wide variety customers demand. That's reflected in their market share. It's also too early to say that Apple Silicon is a threat to anyone. Apple Silicon in the iPhone and iPad is a low power & low performance chip compared to AMD/Intel. They have a huge challenge scaling that up to compete on desktop. Their first chips are going into their lower performance products. I'm sure it'll be decent in that role, but Apple likely NEEDS 5nm just so that it makes a respectable showing compared to AMD/Intel.

bigiain 6y ago
> a premium manufacturer that produces desktops and laptops that only run MacOS Not sure that's been true for some time now. Wouldn't they be better described as "a premium manufacturer of mobile phones that run iOS with an app ecosystem they make 30% commission on, who also make legacy propitiatory laptop and desktop devices"? (I agree with the rest of your comment though. Apple _don't want_ 99% of Android or Windows customers, and are more than happy for Huawei and Oppo and AliExpress to sell phones and laptops to people Apple dont care about. They _might_ care a bit about encouraging top of the range Samsung or Pixel phone customers to iPhones, maybe. And they at least used to try to woo the dev/webdev crowd to macOS machines, but less obviously these days, it seems to me.)
toxik 6y ago
You are of course aware that Apple is soon selling computers with their own processors, I hope. I don’t think Apple is struggling with performance in their chips at all. > If you get a PC, you get literally thousands of choices. And none of them work reliably.
- masklinn 6y ago

tengbretson 6y ago

I suspect Apple's chips have a much smaller overall die size, so the economics of the early 5nm defect rate might just make more sense for apple than amd.

masklinn 6y ago
Sources I find say that AMD’s chiplets are about 75mm2, while the A13 was about 100mm2. An other commenter theorised that Apple had simply outbid AMD for the production capacity.

kergonath 6y ago

Everyone will have access to that node in the near future, once more infrastructure is built and that processes become more efficient. Apple is not in competition with any CPU maker; I think "existential threat" is a bit overblown. Unless there is a revolution at Apple leadership, ARM Macs will remain a slice of the PC market. There will still be lots of room for others.

thesz 6y ago

The "node" or lambda is not all that important. It is a multiplication factor - you get sizes of parts in integer scales of node size. It allows for some parts of chip parts to be smaller. Most transistors stay about the same, because you cannot make them much smaller, otherwise they will leak or will not be as fast as needed. If you look for transition of the same company from lambda1 to smaller lambda2 you will see that gate or transistor density rises not as theoretical square of lambda1/lambda2, but as about lambda1/lambda2 or less. It is also quite possible to screw things at smaller lambdas. For example, NVidia get their process right for same lambda only after several years, they were fighting steady state leaks, power issues and the like. And NVidia, just like AMD and Apple, was using TSMC. So if you are pissed about AMD lagging behind a node, don't be. Being at forefront of node size does not mean instant success, lagging a node size step behind does not mean you will get much inferior product.