So we'll see at least 1-2 years of Apple Silicon being at least one node ahead of competition. I am curious for how long will be Apple able to pull this lead off, and what the perf/watt will look like when (if?) AMD has node parity with Apple in the near future. Or when perhaps Intel uses TSMC as well, and the same process node.
I think this was Apple's game for a LONG time. They have led in mobile chips to the point where they are sometimes 2 years ahead of the competition.
They do this using their monopsony power (they will buy all the fab capacity at TSMC and/or Samsung, and well before competition is aiming to do so either).
> They do this using their monopsony power (they will buy all the fab capacity at TSMC and/or Samsung, and well before competition is aiming to do so either).
It's not just buying power - Apple pays billions of dollars yearly to TSMC for R&D work itself. These nodes literally would not exist on the timelines they do without Apple writing big fat checks for blue-sky R&D, unless there's another big customer who would be willing to step up and play sugar-daddy.
Most of the other potential candidates either own their own fabs (intel, samsung, TI, etc), are working on stuff that doesn't really need cutting-edge nodes (TI, Asmedia, Renesas, etc), or simply lack the scale of production to ever make it work (NVIDIA, AMD, etc). Apple is unique in that they hit all three: fabless, cutting-edge, massive-scale, plus they're willing to pay a premium to not just secure access but to actually fund development of the nodes from scratch.
It would be a very interesting alt-history if Apple had not done this - TSMC 7nm would probably have been on timelines similar to Intel 10nm, AMD wouldn't have access to a node with absurd cache density and vastly superior efficiency compared to the alternatives (Intel 14nm was still a better-than-market node, compared to the GF/Samsung alternatives in 2019!), etc. I think AMD almost certainly goes under in this timeline, without Zen2/Zen3/Zen3D having huge caches and Rome making a huge splash in the server market, and without TSMC styling on GF so badly that GF leaves the market and lets AMD out of the WSA, Zen2 probably would have been on a failing GF 7nm node with much lower cache density, and would just have been far less impressive.
AMD of course did a ton of work too, they came up with the interconnect and the topology, but it still rather directly owes its continued existence to Apple and those big fat R&D check. You can't have AMD building efficient, scalable cache monsters (CPU and GPU) without TSMC being 2 nodes ahead of market on cache density and 1 node ahead of the market on efficiency. And they wouldn't have been there without Apple writing a blank check for node R&D.
They absolutely use their power (aka money) to buy fab capacity but they are also responsible for a ton of investment in fabs (new fabs and new nodes). Because of that investment they get first dibs and the new node. In the end it's up to the the reader to decide if this is a net positive for the industry (would we be moving as fast without Apple's investment? Even accounting for the delay in getting fab time until after Apple gets a taste).
What would motivate TSMC to choose to only have 1 customer?
TSMC is known as "huguo shenshan" or “magic mountain that protects the nation”. What would motivate TSMC to choose to have their geopolitical security represented by only 2 senators?
IIRC they were using TSMC before TSMC had a material process lead and supported them (and moved away from Samsung) with big contracts and a long term commitment. Hardly surprising that they have first go a new process. Not a risk less bet but one that has paid off.
Exactly. You cannot look at that as if they decided 2 years ago to just buy all the capacity. Their relationship with TSMC goes back way further than that, and there have been several ups and downs along the way.
Yea this is what I am wondering as well. If nobody else ends up switching to ARM in the laptop/desktop space and eventually AMD and Intel are making 5 or 3nm chips then surely this massive lead in power efficiency is going to close. At the current levels the new apple computers seem awesome - but if they are only 10-20% more efficient?
You do have ARM in Chromebooks. Any wholesale switch for Windows seems problematic given software support. But beyond gaming, a decent chunk of development, and multimdeia, a lot of people mostly live in a browser these days.
