4 ms·

This is good news for the US and bad news for Taiwan, geopolitically.

• spiderfarmer 2y ago
  You're overestimating the importance of that specific chip.
  • gadders 2y ago
    My assumption is if they can do that chip, they can do others and there is less need to defend Taiwan and the massive TSMC fab there.
    • drexlspivey 2y ago
      No, TSMC said that the cutting edge fabs will always be in Taiwan
  • jmmcd 2y ago
    Good news doesn't have to mean overwhelming good news. Directionally, it is clearly good, not bad, and not nothing.
• bux93 2y ago
  Depends. China's obsession with Taiwan is a mix of domestic signaling and posturing internationally and the latter is mostly aimed at the US. China could choose to be more aggressive over Taiwan, as the US should care less. But, since the US care less about Taiwan, perhaps China will turn its saber rattling to other strategic interests of the US, giving the Taiwanese some reprieve.
• resource_waste 2y ago
  This isnt Nvidia and this isnt some high end CPU. This is a mobile phone CPU, and its Apple. You are getting insignificant technology.
  • vineyardlabs 2y ago
    Not so. Apple's new mobile processors are routinely the fastest processors in the world (single threaded) when they come out. The A17 pro is currently the 17th fastest CPU, and the M3 (which is in MacBook airs and iPads) is number 2. Sure these don't have the scope or number of transistors of like an NVIDIA Blackwell or something but in terms of performance/watt these are ultra high-end ICs.
    • resource_waste 2y ago
      No one is competing on CPU though. Its like having the highest RPM lawnmower, no one cares, its not useful. To make it worse, they arent even the best. Its getting mid tier, and in 2024, its nearly unreasonable to buy mid-tier when low-tier is good enough for everything.
      • vineyardlabs 2y ago
        Not sure about that, the consumer CPU market is probably more competitive right now than it's been in a decade, primarily on efficiency. Also not sure what that has to do with the original point, which is that the A15 is not an impressive chip to be manufacturing in the US because it's designed by apple and meant for mobile devices, neither of which are reasons to discount the complexity of the chip.
• tmnvdb 2y ago
  The idea that the US only cares about Taiwan because of chips is popular on HN but just dead wrong. Taiwan has been part of the China containment strategy before TSMC was founded.
  • forinti 2y ago
    So the US doesn't care about Taiwan, it cares about China. Taiwan is just a tool.
    • stephen_g 2y ago
      Well, yeah… The US doesn’t really have allies (the one exception some would say is Israel) - why would Taiwan be any different from the others? Interestingly, TSMC only became a stand-out player in the last 15 years, before then there were basically zero reasons for the US to care about Taiwan except to contain China. Now they have one reason apart from containing China, but it’s still mostly just about China.
      • barsonme 2y ago
        The United States has many allies. Obviously the US and UK have a “special relationship.” Then there is AUKUS. Then NATO. DoD calls a number of SEA countries “allies,” including Japan and Korea. Stating that the US has no allies other than Israel is unequivocally false.
        • willy_k 2y ago
          The really before the claim suggests that GP is referring to internal attitudes, I would imagine that they are aware that NATO is technically an alliance.
      • ijidak 2y ago
        There is probably no alliance on earth tighter than the U.S. and the U.K. If that's not an alliance, then you might as well say that alliances don't exist anywhere. (And maybe that is what you mean to say.) Even the alliance with Israel can't compete with the alliance between the US and UK from World War I to now.