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Cake day: July 1st, 2023

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  • The software aspect I won’t argue with. But I will go against the chip design. In 2024, most parts of most chips are built from library prefabs, and outside of that, all the efficiencies come from taking advantage of what the chip fab is offering.

    That’s why these made up nm numbers are so important. They are effectively marketing and don’t have much basis in reality (euv wavelength is 13nm~, but we’re claiming 6 now) - what they do indicate is improvements in other aspects of lithography.

    Apple aren’t the geniuses here, which is why their M chips were bested by intels euv chips as soon as Intel upgraded its fabs to be more advanced than tsmc for six months. It’s all about who’s fsb is running the bleeding edge.



  • The smartest thing Apple has done in the past decade is buy TSMC a factory. They just gave a TSMC a factory for free, with the deal being they have guaranteed time every year, no fighting.

    That’s what let them make their own laptop cpus, time. The M cpus aren’t good because of arm, or apple geniuses, but rather TSMC bleeding edge tech and high yeilds. And of course, every company that didn’t buy TSMC a factory has to fight for time, meaning everyone else loses out.

    The costs of being a bleeding edge chip fab make reproducing tsmc elsewhere unattainable.