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Silicon chip production costs are based on three factors: area, layers and resolution. That's pretty much it. The complexity of the chip's design (on a single
by rmah 5y ago
Silicon chip production costs are based on three factors: area, layers and resolution. That's pretty much it. The complexity of the chip's design (on a single layer) is not really that major a factor. So.. Cost = Area * Num_Layers * 1/Process_Scale.
As far as I'm aware Apple M1 chips are not an order of magnitude (much less two) larger in area, layer count or resolution vs Intel/AMD or similar ARM chips. Thus it's highly unlikely for them to cost 100x more to produce. 2x or 3x more expensive I could believe, 100x... nope.
- stefan_ 5y agoThat ignores defects, where chip design and things like market segmentation come into play. Defect in a flash chip is easily worked around, but how do you sell a M1 with a broken CPU core? No M.5 out there.
- cwizou 5y agoFYI, Apple does have two variants of the M1, with 7 or 8 GPU cores (those have a large area and are likely targets for defects) : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_M1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_M1 Defects in CPUs (not GPUs) for segmentation hasn't really been a thing for a while, maybe the Phenom X3, and that was already a bit of a stretch from what I recall as most X3s had a perfectly functional 4th core. A cheap cellphone SoC is definitely not pennies, <10$ is a better estimate and it's usually without RAM included which is not always accounted for in comparisons. I vastly agree with rmah and most estimates do too.