Apple May Tap Intel to Manufacture Future M-Series Mac Chips

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8 points·9cb14c1ec0··3 comments

>That said, if Apple taps Intel to manufacture its future M-series chips, this could make production cheaper, as TSMC wouldn't be the only company responsible for making Apple's best chips. In addition, this could also make upcoming processors even better, as both manufacturers would fight to get the latest technologies and offer them to Apple.

I thought Apple was very tightly coupled with TSMC as far as the manufacturing process, to the point that I'm not really sure Intel finds any magic savings that TSMC or even Apple hasn't already identified for the same chips.

I doubt it would be much cheaper. Apple probably wants some leverage in their relationship with TSMC, just like they used to want some leverage in their relationship with Intel.

It'll be the same for Intel with their new process node.

Everyone working with the latest process node is tightly coupled with the manufacturer: Nvidia, Apple, AMD, and Qualcomm. Microarchitecture design and optimization for a new process is super expensive and hard.

Legacy processes have settled, have standardized design software and tooling, so everything costs less.

ps. Nvidia and Qualcomm are considering Samsungs 2mm because TSMC's 2-nanometer chip production capacity is extremely limited.

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