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I don’t think so. This is the failure of having a choke point in semiconductor manufacturing and centralisation of all manufacturing infrastructure. No business

by hvgk 5y ago

I don’t think so. This is the failure of having a choke point in semiconductor manufacturing and centralisation of all manufacturing infrastructure. No business is going to turn down the largest pile of cash being thrown at them. AMD and Qualcomm could of course have invested heavily in reducing this risk but no, they didn’t.

tentacleuno 5y ago
> AMD and Qualcomm could of course have invested heavily in reducing this risk but no, they didn’t. We're in the middle of a chip shortage, though.
- cormacrelf 5y ago
  If, having seen the risk turn into reality, they want to buy some of Apple's capacity, they are free to make an offer.
  - sudosysgen 5y ago
    Why would Apple allow that? They clearly have the money to outbid AMD and Qualcomm just to prevent them from competing, and the leverage to threaten moving their phones to a competitor and drop the prices for TSMC in the opposite case.
    - cormacrelf 5y ago
      The only way to analyse this as something bad Apple has done is to make out a case under competition or antitrust law in some jurisdiction. In Australia we have the concept of exclusive dealing, which the US (I think) doesn't have an equivalent to, but even then, it's extremely difficult to violate this law as a purchaser of goods/services, using money to buy them. This is because ANYBODY can acquire money and compete with you by offering more money. You could hold a monopoly on your own products (and then if you imposed exclusivity arrangements on purchasers of your products you would be abusing your market power to lessen competition), but it's essentially impossible to hold a monopoly on money itself. In all, you're characterising Apple, competing fiercely in an open market, as preventing other people competing by being too good at it. That is a bit ridiculous. If AMD and Qualcomm die out as a result, it will be because they couldn't keep up, which is capitalism functioning correctly. Even under those very broad laws, the only party you can remotely fault is TSMC, and even then, they are literally just taking from the highest bidder, which is again capitalism functioning correctly.
      - sudosysgen 5y ago
        Ultimately I'm not making a legal argument. All I'm saying is that it's very bad for the industry and for the public in general that Apple is the only entity that has access to the cutting edge and that it's only available in their golden cage. It doesn't really matter to me if this is capitalism working correctly or not, or if it's legal or not, ultimately all that matters is that because of this computing is being pushed back, we're not seeing as much competition on performance as we could be, and that's generally bad for everyone. I understand that Apple is just looking out for #1, I just think this is bad for the general public.
        cormacrelf 5y ago
        Right, and I’m saying they are not the only entity with access, because all you have to do to get into the golden cage is have a really good idea and get financing, and that is possible. Letting everyone else get your idea of a fair share of production capacity to produce sub-par chips is not my idea of good progress. If they truly deserve capacity allocated to them, they should demonstrate they can design better chips, convince someone with money to fund it, and do what Apple’s done (buying TSMC a fabrication plant). That they haven’t done this, and they are punished by not having the cash to acquire production capacity, means that they will feel the pain, and have to start innovating their way out. This is what capitalism gives you: the fire under your butt to innovate. That’s how it’s good. If you prefer the lazy to succeed anyway, you are free to feel that way. Edit, to address what you said exactly: this is the way in which losing out on capacity forces them to compete harder. If they fall behind in benchmarks for a few years, and you read that as a lack of competition, you are wrong: it is perfect competition, they fell behind, and are now working harder than they were before to design something better. Just because capitalism in the long term usually gets competitors to converge does not mean a temporary winner in the lead indicates competition is not occurring. Apple delivered a jolt to a market that had been flatlining, so there is more competition now than there was before.
        sudosysgen 5y ago
        But the chips are not sub-par. The entire point of my argument is that at an equal lithography the competition can outperform Apple. The performance advantage that Apple can demonstrate is under the margin of improvement from 7nm to 5nm all else being equal (RAM, TDP, etc..) There was already a fire under their butt before Apple. Both AMD, Intel, NVidia and even Qualcomm are competing against each other. And that competition yielded architectures that are at least on par and very probably better than what Apple can do. They can design better chips. They just don't have as much money as Apple. It's something that Apple already did before with, for example, the first generation of small HDDs, they bought out the entire production line and their competitors, despite being able to make MP3s that were just as good, had to wait for years to access the parts.
    - mcphage 5y ago
      "It would be expensive to compete so why bother?" isn’t really how you succeed under capitalism.
- fundad 5y ago
  Yeah everyone need capacity and only one player can get it first.
kuschku 5y ago
If Apple can open their war chest (which they created through years of monopolistic actions) and buy capacity, that’s not fair. AMD didn’t run a monopolistic business with 90%+ profit margins for years, and couldn’t have done so.
- zepto 5y ago
  Apple’s profit margins have never been 90%+. I recommend you do some googling before posting false information. Apple has never had a monopoly on anything. They just use the same silicon for a lot of products and have good profit margins, so they can place large orders with TSMC.
  - ethbr0 5y ago
    Apple has a monopoly on the iOS app store, which is a lucrative enough "market" to create systemic problems. But from a physical perspective, they've never had the kind of monopoly Intel enjoyed for decades.
    - zepto 5y ago
      > Apple has a monopoly on the iOS App Store The courts have ruled that the iOS App Store is not a monopoly.
      - jsnell 5y ago
        They haven't, in the level of generality you imply. The ruling was much narrower: that Apple doesn't have a monopoly in the market of "digital mobile gaming transactions".
      - Notanothertoo 5y ago
        A yes the courts, such an informed non biased authority
        zepto 5y ago
newsclues 5y ago
If AMD didn’t sell Global Foundry and had kept pace with investment for modern fans would be an interesting alternative reality…
- volta83 5y ago
  Yeah, one in which AMD actually ended up bankrupt and Intel became the only vendor supplying x86 chips.
- sudosysgen 5y ago
  AMD just didn't have that kind of money.
- fomine3 5y ago
  Or what if UAE funds don't give up investing.
hinkley 5y ago
I’ve worked for a couple places where we as a vendor we’re not given the respect and/or margins that the customer’s road map demanded. It was lousy watching customers crow about us while we were going bankrupt. If a deal is too good to be true, it probably is. I’m not claiming Apple respects TSMC more than Qualcomm does (but does Qualcomm respect anybody? They are practically the bad guys in any number of stories), but this is what respect would probably look like. Speaking of Qualcomm, Apple is trying to compete with them on radio chips, so leaving TSMC probably works to that goal.
naasking 5y ago
> This is the failure of having a choke point in semiconductor manufacturing and centralisation of all manufacturing infrastructure. Arguably, bleeding edge silicon fabs are natural monopolies. Pushing transistor sizes down to atomic scales entails non-linear increases in costs to get decent yields. That's why there are very few fabs at the bleeding edge any more.

by hvgk 5y ago

tentacleuno 5y ago

> AMD and Qualcomm could of course have invested heavily in reducing this risk but no, they didn’t. We're in the middle of a chip shortage, though.

cormacrelf 5y ago
If, having seen the risk turn into reality, they want to buy some of Apple's capacity, they are free to make an offer.
- sudosysgen 5y ago
  Why would Apple allow that? They clearly have the money to outbid AMD and Qualcomm just to prevent them from competing, and the leverage to threaten moving their phones to a competitor and drop the prices for TSMC in the opposite case.
  - cormacrelf 5y ago
    The only way to analyse this as something bad Apple has done is to make out a case under competition or antitrust law in some jurisdiction. In Australia we have the concept of exclusive dealing, which the US (I think) doesn't have an equivalent to, but even then, it's extremely difficult to violate this law as a purchaser of goods/services, using money to buy them. This is because ANYBODY can acquire money and compete with you by offering more money. You could hold a monopoly on your own products (and then if you imposed exclusivity arrangements on purchasers of your products you would be abusing your market power to lessen competition), but it's essentially impossible to hold a monopoly on money itself. In all, you're characterising Apple, competing fiercely in an open market, as preventing other people competing by being too good at it. That is a bit ridiculous. If AMD and Qualcomm die out as a result, it will be because they couldn't keep up, which is capitalism functioning correctly. Even under those very broad laws, the only party you can remotely fault is TSMC, and even then, they are literally just taking from the highest bidder, which is again capitalism functioning correctly.
    - sudosysgen 5y ago
      Ultimately I'm not making a legal argument. All I'm saying is that it's very bad for the industry and for the public in general that Apple is the only entity that has access to the cutting edge and that it's only available in their golden cage. It doesn't really matter to me if this is capitalism working correctly or not, or if it's legal or not, ultimately all that matters is that because of this computing is being pushed back, we're not seeing as much competition on performance as we could be, and that's generally bad for everyone. I understand that Apple is just looking out for #1, I just think this is bad for the general public.
      - cormacrelf 5y ago
        Right, and I’m saying they are not the only entity with access, because all you have to do to get into the golden cage is have a really good idea and get financing, and that is possible. Letting everyone else get your idea of a fair share of production capacity to produce sub-par chips is not my idea of good progress. If they truly deserve capacity allocated to them, they should demonstrate they can design better chips, convince someone with money to fund it, and do what Apple’s done (buying TSMC a fabrication plant). That they haven’t done this, and they are punished by not having the cash to acquire production capacity, means that they will feel the pain, and have to start innovating their way out. This is what capitalism gives you: the fire under your butt to innovate. That’s how it’s good. If you prefer the lazy to succeed anyway, you are free to feel that way. Edit, to address what you said exactly: this is the way in which losing out on capacity forces them to compete harder. If they fall behind in benchmarks for a few years, and you read that as a lack of competition, you are wrong: it is perfect competition, they fell behind, and are now working harder than they were before to design something better. Just because capitalism in the long term usually gets competitors to converge does not mean a temporary winner in the lead indicates competition is not occurring. Apple delivered a jolt to a market that had been flatlining, so there is more competition now than there was before.
        sudosysgen 5y ago
        But the chips are not sub-par. The entire point of my argument is that at an equal lithography the competition can outperform Apple. The performance advantage that Apple can demonstrate is under the margin of improvement from 7nm to 5nm all else being equal (RAM, TDP, etc..) There was already a fire under their butt before Apple. Both AMD, Intel, NVidia and even Qualcomm are competing against each other. And that competition yielded architectures that are at least on par and very probably better than what Apple can do. They can design better chips. They just don't have as much money as Apple. It's something that Apple already did before with, for example, the first generation of small HDDs, they bought out the entire production line and their competitors, despite being able to make MP3s that were just as good, had to wait for years to access the parts.
  - mcphage 5y ago
    "It would be expensive to compete so why bother?" isn’t really how you succeed under capitalism.
fundad 5y ago
Yeah everyone need capacity and only one player can get it first.

kuschku 5y ago

If Apple can open their war chest (which they created through years of monopolistic actions) and buy capacity, that’s not fair. AMD didn’t run a monopolistic business with 90%+ profit margins for years, and couldn’t have done so.

zepto 5y ago
Apple’s profit margins have never been 90%+. I recommend you do some googling before posting false information. Apple has never had a monopoly on anything. They just use the same silicon for a lot of products and have good profit margins, so they can place large orders with TSMC.
- ethbr0 5y ago
  Apple has a monopoly on the iOS app store, which is a lucrative enough "market" to create systemic problems. But from a physical perspective, they've never had the kind of monopoly Intel enjoyed for decades.
  - zepto 5y ago
    > Apple has a monopoly on the iOS App Store The courts have ruled that the iOS App Store is not a monopoly.
    - jsnell 5y ago
      They haven't, in the level of generality you imply. The ruling was much narrower: that Apple doesn't have a monopoly in the market of "digital mobile gaming transactions".
    - Notanothertoo 5y ago
      A yes the courts, such an informed non biased authority
      - zepto 5y ago

newsclues 5y ago

If AMD didn’t sell Global Foundry and had kept pace with investment for modern fans would be an interesting alternative reality…

volta83 5y ago
Yeah, one in which AMD actually ended up bankrupt and Intel became the only vendor supplying x86 chips.
sudosysgen 5y ago
AMD just didn't have that kind of money.
fomine3 5y ago
Or what if UAE funds don't give up investing.

hinkley 5y ago

I’ve worked for a couple places where we as a vendor we’re not given the respect and/or margins that the customer’s road map demanded. It was lousy watching customers crow about us while we were going bankrupt. If a deal is too good to be true, it probably is. I’m not claiming Apple respects TSMC more than Qualcomm does (but does Qualcomm respect anybody? They are practically the bad guys in any number of stories), but this is what respect would probably look like. Speaking of Qualcomm, Apple is trying to compete with them on radio chips, so leaving TSMC probably works to that goal.

naasking 5y ago

> This is the failure of having a choke point in semiconductor manufacturing and centralisation of all manufacturing infrastructure. Arguably, bleeding edge silicon fabs are natural monopolies. Pushing transistor sizes down to atomic scales entails non-linear increases in costs to get decent yields. That's why there are very few fabs at the bleeding edge any more.