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> Apple has 5nm on lockdown right now

Qualcomm has loads of 5nm chips. They're pretty solidly beaten by Apple's entrants, but they've been using them for over a year now. Huawei, Marvell, Samsung and others have 5nm products too.

This notion that Apple just bullied everyone out of 5nm is not backed by fact. For that matter, Apple's efficiency holds even at the same node.

There is this weird thing where some demand that we put an asterisk on everything Apple does. I remember the whole "sure it's faster but that's just because of a big cache" (as if that negated the whole faster / more efficient thing, or as if competing makers were somehow forbidden from using larger caches so it was all so unfair). Now it's all waved away as just a node advantage, when any analysis at all reveals that to be nonsensical.

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> This notion that Apple just bullied everyone out of 5nm is not backed by fact.

In the context of laptops, its true. Neither Intel or AMD has chips being built on TSMC N5 or a comparable process. AMD is on TSMC N7, and Intel is currently on their own 10 nm process, moving to "Intel 7" with Alder Lake which is getting formally introduced in 2 days.

"In the context of laptops, its true"

Intel wasn't in competition for TSMC's processes at all, and AMD was in absolutely no hurry to 5nm (especially given that they were targeting cost effectiveness). The fact that Apple readied a 5nm design, and decided that it was worth it for their customers, in no way indicates that they "bullied" to the front.

Quite contrary, for years Intel made their mobile/ "low power" parts on some of their older processes. It was a low profit part for them and they saved the best for their high end Xeons and so on (where the process benefit was entirely spent on speed -- note that there is a lot of BS about the benefit of process nodes where people claim ridiculous benefits when in reality you can have a small efficiency improvement, or a small performance improvement, but not both. The biggest real benefit is that you can pack more on a given silicon space, in Apple's case loads of cores a fat GPU, big caches, etc). If Apple upset their business model, well tough beans for them.

As an aside, note that the other initial customer of 5nm was HiSilicon (a subsidiary of Huawei) with the Kirin 9000. That's a pretty sad day when AMD and Intel are supposedly sad also-rans to Huawei. Or, more reality based, they simply weren't even in competition for that space, had zero 5nm designs ready, and didn't prioritize the process.

Well... Intel not having 5nm is entirely Intel's fault. They used process to their advantage and, well, when they messed up their process cadence, the advantage evaporated.

AMD could, but they seem to be very happy where they are. They also have to decide on which fronts they want to outcompete Intel and, it seems, process isn't one of them.

> Qualcomm has loads of 5nm chips.

I think we all know that TSMC 5nm is quite a bit better than Samsung 5nm.

Samsung is "budget" 5nm. It ain't as good as the best-of-the-best that Apple is buying here.

> Process is nearly everything in performance/watt.

> TSMC 5nm is quite a bit better than Samsung 5nm.

These two statements conflict.

> These two statements conflict.

TSMC 5nm is not the same process as Samsung 5nm though?

All the processes are the company's secret sauce. They aren't sharing the details. Ultimately, Samsung comes out and says "5nm technology", but that doesn't mean its necessarily competitive with TSMC 5nm.

Indeed, Intel 10nm is somewhat competitive against TSMC 7nm. The specific "nm" is largely a marketing thing at this point... and Intel is going through a rebranding effort. (Don't get me wrong: Intel is still far behind because it tripped up in 2016. But the Intel 14nm process was the best-in-the-world at that timeframe)

You can compare transistor count per mm^2 instead of nanometers.

But you compare power-efficiency by how efficient each transistor is.

TSMC N5p is 10% more efficient and 5% higher clocks than TSMC N5. The same 5nm __BY THE SAME COMPANY__ can change 15.5% in just a year, as manufacturing issues are figured out.

Making every transistor 10% less power and 5% more GHz across the entire chip, while keeping the same size, is a huge bonus that cannot be ignored. I don't know what magic these chip engineers are doing, but they're surely spending some supercomputer on brute forcing all sorts of shapes/sizes of transistors to find the best density/power/speed tradeoffs per transistor.

This is part of the reason why Intel stuck with 14nm for so long. 14nm+++++++ kept increasing clock speeds, yields, and power efficiency (but not density), so it never really was "worth it" for Intel to switch to 10nm (which Intel had some customer silicon tapped out for years, but only at low clock speeds IIRC).

It isn't until recently that Intel seems to have figured out the clock speed issue and has begun offering mainstream chips at 10nm.

Ref: https://www.anandtech.com/show/16463/snapdragon-888-vs-exyno...

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