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I can offer a broad generalization. The new manufacturing process should get us some double digit percentage gains in performance, power consumption or heat. Cu
by dougmwne 4y ago
I can offer a broad generalization. The new manufacturing process should get us some double digit percentage gains in performance, power consumption or heat. Current Apple product designs are mainly constrained by heat as seen with the recent thermal throttling of the new MacBook Air, so a future M3 processor could be pushed a little harder before it hits its thermal limit. Performance and battery life are already pretty fantastic, so not as much of a practical difference there.
The only current products that are really hurting for better chips are high powered wearables like watches, VR headsets or AR glasses. The next few years should see some tangible improvements in those products, but probably not much difference in desktop, laptop or phone. Datacenters, since they run at high utilization rates, will continue to take advantage of the cost savings of slightly more performance per watt and dollar per transistor costs.
- gameshot911 4y agoOn the manufacturer side the chips are also smaller, which means more chips per wafer (and thus, presumably, more yield/profit), correct?
- dougmwne 4y agoThat is offset some by higher defect rates in newer and smaller processes and ever increasing manufacturing costs per wafer. But the metric that matters is cost per transistor. Historically that was always dropping, but more recently it may be flat for some nodes, increasing temporarily or just not dropping as fast as the historical trend. Some cost estimates for TSMC’S 3nm node: https://wccftech.com/tsmcs-3nm-wafer-prices-will-erode-transistor-density-cost-improvement-worries-morgan-stanley/amp/ https://wccftech.com/tsmcs-3nm-wafer-prices-will-erode-trans...
- nradov 4y agoYield might actually drop, at least initially. Smaller feature sizes are less tolerant of defects so any tiny flaw can cause a chip to fail testing.