devtesla

devtesla wrote

I like Apple way more than you do, but it does really feel like the magic used to be design, software, and marketing and now it's almost entirely about being insanely good at sourcing parts. I can't argue with how good a lot of their products are, but I do wish there were a wider variety of interesting things those chips were going into

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devtesla wrote (edited )

Looks like they've basically bought up the latest processes since 2014. Note that these "3nm" processes they're talking about are just marketing terms at this point, but the lower the nm process the better it is, generally.

Also apple not paying for defective chips is crazy. Part of the reason that cpus come in a billion different models is binning, the best ones are in the most expensive parts and the ones with defective cores turned off make it into the cheaper ones. Apple I guess doesn't deal with that at all.

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devtesla wrote

The answer to "why are Apple's chips the best in the world" is that they have exclusive access to the latest and greatest assembly lines at TSMC, the best semiconductor foundry in the world. AMD and Nvidia have great CPUs and GPUs because they have secondary access to those lines after Apple.

I don't want to say that Apple has no expertise at building chips and it's all TSMC, but that's the core reason why Lol. And goddamn is TSMC important fr

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