Hacker News Reader

Comment by walshemj | Hacker News Reader

Supposedly a new 7nm fab in Taiwan is going to cost around 17 billion dollars just for the FAB.

Not sure Apple share holders will think trying to compete with intel and AMD is good use of their money

That's not relevant. Apple isn't going to be manufacturing its own chips, it doesn't do that currently. What the person was talking about was the same thing it does for the iPhone chips, which is design them and then get TSMC to fabricate them.

$17 billion is peanuts for Apple. However, Apple uses TSMC for fabrication and they are already at 7nm. No need to own fabs. AMD doesn't own fabs either. The Apple designed A12X Bionic processor contains 10 billion transistors and is already competitive with desktop processors from AMD and Intel. Do you think it would be that difficult for Apple to design a desktop or laptop version? They have more than enough money to hire all of the smartest engineers on the planet. The problem would be backwards compatibility, like the transition from PPC to x86 in 2005.

But it is the share holders peanuts - is a quixotic and expensive charge to over take AMD or Intel the best use of our money?

I thought I made this clear in my previous response. Apple is already highly competitive in processor design. The A12X matches the mid range processors from AMD and Intel. AMD does not own a fab. Apple doesn't need to own a fab either.

It turns out they are going ahead with this plan already https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-02/apple-is-...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com