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Comment by ChrisLTD | Hacker News Reader

I wonder if Apple will buy up all the capacity for the new process node again.

Apple has not really "bought up all the capacity" it was just PR spin. they had simply booked three months worth while TSMC is still ramping up the 5nm process.

Apple market share is simply not large enough to do that. Yes their numbers are huge, but there are lot more people who cannot or will not buy laptops priced $ 1,000+ than there are ones who are ready to pay that globally.

It’s not just the M1 though. I believe they are going to be if they aren’t already using TSMC for all their chips so iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch if I recall correctly. That’s a lot of capacity.

Ultimately they’re in this huge success mode which is great! They just have to be careful Not to overbuild additional supply and end in a situation where demand tempers for some reason and they are now in a glut

To first approximation, it's not the M1 at all. In terms of silicon area, Apple ships iPhones, with a few other products mixed in. But mostly they just make iPhones.

Android devices outsell the iPhone almost 10 to 1. I'd wager that Qualcomm's 5nm orders will be very close to Apple's current order.

I think Android chips have less die area though (because they have less cache) and many android devices are rather cheap and have SoCs produced on older processes.

Snapdragon 865 is 83.54mm^2 (7nm)

Apple A12 is 83.27mm^2 (7nm)

Apple A13 is 98.48mm^2 (7nm+)

Apple A14 is 88mm^2 (5nm)

Not a very big difference. Remember, Qualcomm's chip includes a modem while Apple's does not (at present). Qualcomm has also been putting a lot of resources into other areas like neural processors. Their upcoming 888 claims 26 TOPS (vs 11 TOPS for Apple)

Cache is a very common misnomer too. A14 has 8MB of shared L2. 888 has 4MB of shared L3 plus 1MB for the X1 core and 0.5MB per each A78 core. It also has 3MB of what they call DSU cache which serves as a kind of general cache for everything on the chip that needs to hit memory. That's actually 1.5MB more total cache than Apple offers.

> will not buy laptops priced $ 1,000+

The iPhone and iPad are using up a lot more of TSMC's capacity than the Mac. Also most sub $1k laptops and lower end phones not getting chips with the latest TSMC silicon in them. They are getting older 14nm Qualcomm, AMD, or Intel CPUs.

EDIT: I previously implied all sub $1k laptops had 14nm CPUs which isn't true.

You say that, but there are certainly Ryzen 7 laptop models around in the sub-$1k range. People like HP put their mid-ranges together with AMD chips on the basis that Intel's were the premium ones.

Now, these models do exist, in theory. I challenge you to find any stock, though, and that's going to hurt AMD.

The 4700U/4500U product lines have been everywhere for the past few months in the US. HP/Dell/Acer all have products sitting on the shelves at best buy, walmart, etc. These are the mid-tier AMD products, but they are extremely well placed when compared with the vast majority of the intel product lines they are sitting next to. In many cases the $600-700 those products are selling for best pretty much all the intel products priced below $1200 or so.

(HP, which I don't recommend, was selling a 4700U based product starting at $400 on black Friday on their web site)

edit: Heck just checked there are loaded Asus ROG G14's in stock at a local retailer for under $1200 (that is 4900HS+RTX 2060). Pretty much one of the fastest laptops out there.

Agree. My above post was poorly worded.

If TSMC are smart they will reserve some capacity for AMD, in order to keep AMD as a customer. Apple has no alternative, so no reason to give Apple exclusive access (unless Apple pays a ton for it).

> Apple has no alternative, so no reason to give Apple exclusive access

Likely billions of reasons. It's likely Apple pays a significant premium to get that capacity.

AMD might not even mind this arrangement. Apple is essentially funding these die shrinks and AMD benefits down the road.

> AMD might not even mind this arrangement. Apple is essentially funding these die shrinks and AMD benefits down the road.

Agree with that. AMD is doing amazingly well with just architectural improvements for Zen 3, so I’d bet they’re plenty happy to just let everyone else work out the kinks in 5nm before they hop on in a year or so.

Apple is the one company that has proven itself as extremely capable of going more vertical when it is unhappy with its suppliers. This could be a case where if they don’t fulfill apple’s requests, they could lose Apple completely long term.

Apple isn't going to be replacing TSMC. It would take a few hundred billion dollars of investment at best.

Apple has deep enough pockets. They could stomach it.

There is absolutely no way Apple would build their own foundry. You are talking about a yearly investment of five to ten billion dollars, not to mention how long it'd take to actually make it production ready.

Technical problems aside, Apple's stakeholders would fire the entire board if they approved something like that.

I don’t think shareholders would be very happy to have that money spent on capex instead of paying dividends.

I'm not convinced the advantage it might or might not conter would be worth hundreds of billions of dollars.

This.

Nobody thought Apple would make its own CPUs (SoCs, really.)

Apple is going vertical.

Apple is vertical in design (IP, software) not manufacturing.

As far as I know, Apple doesn't manufacture anything. All manufacturing is outsourced. So it isn't likely that they will want to build a fab for several 10's of billions of dollars even thought they probably could.

Or, use all that Apple money and build more capacity. Perhaps even try to get money out of the US federal government in exchange for an agreement to build new factories in the lower 48.

TSMC has announced they will build a 10nm fab in Arizona. But strategically speaking, Taiwan has an interest in keeping the latest and greatest fabs in Taiwan. It’s an incentive to keep the US invested in their defense.

You don't need latest, and greatest process to make chips for missiles.

Sure, but you might need it to keep several trillion dollars of GDP afloat and ensure economic stability, which is a precursor for national security.

And a good incentive now that Intel loses ground slowly.

Of course. M1 is a huge success and I see more friends of mine buying Apple devices with multiple months of their salaries at this point instead of getting an AMD laptop with more RAM and SSD for half the price.

But worse build quality and CPU and laptop power and...

At this point it’s not clear if Apple machines are overpriced in any way; they beat all their competitors at their price point.

The base price is reasonable, but the RAM and Storage upgrade costs are extortionate.

That's often the case from other OEMs as well. I just checked a Dell Latitude with a 256GB SSD standard. Upgrading to 512GB costs $146.99, and going from 512GB to 1TB is another $142.72. The retail price for a very good 1TB SSD is about $135, so when you pay for that 1TB upgrade from Dell, you would still be getting ripped off even if they also sent you the 256GB and 512GB drives. For $289 in upgrade pricing, Dell owes you at least a full 2TB of storage.

Sure, but with most other OEMs anyone tech savvy (or really just handy with a screwdriver) can buy the base model and get the upgrades separately.

Except that most people don't want to use Apple products, they're fine on Windows.

Sure, when she asked me about it, I told her to get it, try it for 2 weeks, and bring it back if she doesn't like it.

The value depends on the usage. I wouldn't run photoshop +illustrator together with 256G of SSD and 8GB of RAM (which my girlfriend uses a lot), but M1 is amazing for web browsing, which my friend does mostly.

If you want build quality you buy thinkpad and not apple.

I got a Thinkpad 3yrs ago to replace by (now 6-yr old) Macbook Pro. The Thinkpad died, while my MBP is still going strong.

What exactly do you mean by "build quality"? Do you just mean built from glass and aluminium? (hardly obvious choices for a laptop). IMHO, Apple can hardly claim to be leading in "build quality", what with glued-in batteries, un-repairable designs and keyboard reliability issues that have been ongoing for years.

> Do you just mean built from glass and aluminium? (hardly obvious choices for a laptop).

Aluminium bodies are way less prone to "oilification" (aka visibly shiny areas where one's palm rests), and I have yet to see any Windows laptop where the touchpad is comparable with MBPs in both size and quality (palm tracking, gestures).

> what with glued-in batteries, un-repairable designs and keyboard reliability issues that have been ongoing for years.

Battery replacements are possible even for someone with only moderate experience in hardware work, but I agree with you that the process is more complex than it used to be. Regarding the keyboard: get a 2019 16-inch MBP, it has a keyboard with real keys and a physical esc key.

> un-repairable designs

Quality actually means no need to repair and use it till becomes obsolete. That's why Apple's stuff have drastically higher re-sell value than the competition.

Only repair shops fancy to repair stuff, the rest of us prefer it not breaking down in first place.

Ancedotally, I have yet to meet a someone whose Macbook didn't break before it became obsolete.

A quality product shouldn't be so fragile to component failures. Bad RAM shouldn't entail an entire motherboard replacement.

I never met someone who's macbook broke down without spilling the punkin spice latte all over it and second hand market is flooded with old macbooks in mint condition.

LOL. Louis rossman would beg to differ.

no doubt. He made a career of it.

M1 is a good value - I am honestly amazed Apple didn't increase price points given the performance gains relative to the entire field, let alone their previous generation.

Apples pricing can be pretty funny from the outside. They certainly charge a ridiculous amount of money for memory and storage upgrades, on the other side some things are surprisingly cheap. Think of the entry level iPad for example. And now the Mini with the M1 getting cheaper than its predecessor. Short term, Apple could ask any price for the new M1 Macs. However, they have a longer term view with their pricing structure. For sure, they are having way less costs per device, as they don't have to pay the huge sums, Intel asks for their processors. The costs for Apple should be considerably down and they do relay that to the customer.

I suppose it was a wise movement to use that as a way to increase OS market share.

I still see people not liking macOS without even trying it out which is funny but if more people start using it around them, those average joes might start giving them a try which in turn gives Apple profit.

> AMD laptop with more RAM and SSD for half the price.

So you're saying a hypothetical laptop with two AMD cpus inside is more powerful than a M1-based MacBook, yet still less expensive.

What AMD laptop costs $600 and has more than 16GB of RAM?

In Hungary you get a Macbook Air with 256GB SSD and 8GB RAM (cheapest M1) for $1440:

https://www.alza.hu/macbook-air-m1/18884163.htm

16GB with 1TB SSD is not available, but the official price is $2960:

https://www.apple.com/hu/shop/buy-mac/macbook-pro/13-h%C3%BC...

My girlfriend found a 14'' 16GB 1TB AMD 4000x laptop for $1050 there and loves it (ACER Swift 3)

Looks like VAT in Hungary is as high as 27% (is this the rate that applies in this case? VAT-inclusive pricing disguises this tax.), which accounts for much of the price difference.

Yes, 27% VAT + high tariffs are a toxic combination. At the same time for non Apple products there is maybe some dodging of taxes going on (like a company registered in Slovakia), you never know why a product is relatively cheap there, but you can guess.

I always used argep.hu for pricing computer bits. Dunno who's better

But would Apple be content with going from 5nm to 3nm nodes so "quickly"? Given that AMD has been able to squeeze out their Zen 2 and 3 IPC without the need to change nodes completely, it could make sense for Apple to do the same.

Yes. The answer to that is yes.

And Apple almost certainly have had the designs in simulation and test/initial sampling already. CPU design isn't an overnight thing.

Apple fundamentally has more units to spread their designs across. Also, for Apple performance per watt is king. Getting 5% better battery life for a phone is massive. For a desktop or even a laptop, it's nice, but maybe not worth paying the premium for TSMCs latest die shrink.

Most Apple users aren't techies.

So a macbook user can now feel he has the best computer and nobody else is even close. Nobody else is being manufactured using that magic. Maybe he'll even brag about that.

How much is that worth to Apple ?

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