5 ms·

Arguably, TSMC being Apple's preferred fabricator is why it has a current market cap 10x larger than Intel. Apple probably ends up getting chips only slightly

by phonon 2y ago

Arguably, TSMC being Apple's preferred fabricator is why it has a current market cap 10x larger than Intel. Apple probably ends up getting chips only slightly above cost from TSMC. (It pays $18 B a year, which is pretty low for the CPUs in roughly 400 million phones, watches, tablets, Macs, AppleTV, etc. it sells every year) but it also pays well in advance the costs for building the fabs for those chips. This gave TSMC the scale needed to be the world's leading semiconductor manufacturer, which means it simultaneously has lower costs from economies of scale, as well as more pricing power, from being able to offer leading edge nodes first.

talldayo 2y ago
Sure, but also let's not pretend like Apple would pay the same amount for 14nm++++. Even if TSMC didn't exist, Samsung could have beaten Intel on a density roadmap. The looming possibility (if not inevitability) of Apple designing in-house was casting a shadow even then, and today it only makes less-and-less sense mourning the separation of both companies. They wanted different things, and Intel didn't have to rely on TSMC-level density to make their case. It's not like the Core products that went into Macs - making iPhone chips is a bespoke, ground-up production. It barely makes sense for Apple to insist on using Intel fabs unless they're heavily insecure about outsourcing their supply chain. It makes absolutely no sense at all for Intel to design ARM chips when they don't own an architecture license and would ostensibly only purchase one to make Apple happy. Again, I feel like this entire "lament" is manufactured by Apple fans eager to rewrite history with Apple making generous offers to domestic American businesses. In reality, Apple's endless desire for hardware margins drove them to dictator-states and third-world manufacturing hubs to meet their quota. It's okay for us to pragmatically admit Apple never had any business with Intel, and Intel was right not to convince them otherwise.
- qwytw 2y ago
  If Apple went with Intel from the beginning I doubt they would have ended up developing their own chips and they'd probably be just stuck with x86 on Mac XSScale/whatever on mobile. > ARM chips when they don't own an architecture license and would ostensibly only purchase one to make Apple happy They did certainly own one. XScale was a custom core and not licensed from ARM. IIRC pretty much all high-end PDAs used them so it would have been the default/safe choice for Apple had Intel decided not to abandon it. Is there any information about those terms? Could they really have been worse than whatever deal with Apple has with ARM these days? The main downside with ARM/XScale is that Intel would be forced to compete with all other manufacturers and wouldn't have been able to charge their monopolistic/oligopolistic margins on their products. Of course Intel being Intel they could have just added enough proprietary extensions to solve that. > Apple's endless desire for hardware margins drove them to dictator-states and third-world manufacturing hubs to meet their quota Sure. But Apple wasn't really in a position to do that back in 2005-2007. It took years for them to build that because they could do it iteratively, I doubt Intel would have allowed them as much freedom as Samsung though.

by phonon 2y ago

talldayo 2y ago

Sure, but also let's not pretend like Apple would pay the same amount for 14nm++++. Even if TSMC didn't exist, Samsung could have beaten Intel on a density roadmap. The looming possibility (if not inevitability) of Apple designing in-house was casting a shadow even then, and today it only makes less-and-less sense mourning the separation of both companies. They wanted different things, and Intel didn't have to rely on TSMC-level density to make their case. It's not like the Core products that went into Macs - making iPhone chips is a bespoke, ground-up production. It barely makes sense for Apple to insist on using Intel fabs unless they're heavily insecure about outsourcing their supply chain. It makes absolutely no sense at all for Intel to design ARM chips when they don't own an architecture license and would ostensibly only purchase one to make Apple happy. Again, I feel like this entire "lament" is manufactured by Apple fans eager to rewrite history with Apple making generous offers to domestic American businesses. In reality, Apple's endless desire for hardware margins drove them to dictator-states and third-world manufacturing hubs to meet their quota. It's okay for us to pragmatically admit Apple never had any business with Intel, and Intel was right not to convince them otherwise.

qwytw 2y ago
If Apple went with Intel from the beginning I doubt they would have ended up developing their own chips and they'd probably be just stuck with x86 on Mac XSScale/whatever on mobile. > ARM chips when they don't own an architecture license and would ostensibly only purchase one to make Apple happy They did certainly own one. XScale was a custom core and not licensed from ARM. IIRC pretty much all high-end PDAs used them so it would have been the default/safe choice for Apple had Intel decided not to abandon it. Is there any information about those terms? Could they really have been worse than whatever deal with Apple has with ARM these days? The main downside with ARM/XScale is that Intel would be forced to compete with all other manufacturers and wouldn't have been able to charge their monopolistic/oligopolistic margins on their products. Of course Intel being Intel they could have just added enough proprietary extensions to solve that. > Apple's endless desire for hardware margins drove them to dictator-states and third-world manufacturing hubs to meet their quota Sure. But Apple wasn't really in a position to do that back in 2005-2007. It took years for them to build that because they could do it iteratively, I doubt Intel would have allowed them as much freedom as Samsung though.