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Comment by drexlspivey | Hacker News Reader

What other options does Apple have? Intel doesn’t manufacture ARM chips (yet) and Samsung is 1+ process nodes behind the upcoming TSMC N3E

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The article outlined at least one option that Apple has: stay on the 5nm node for a bit longer. It doesn't seem impossible at all that TSMC would cave/agree to only a 2-3% hike in 6 months. While a greater lead is I'm sure welcome, it's not like Apple isn't _extremely_ well positioned in every market they operate in, even on 5nm.

“N3 technology will offer up to 70% logic density gain, up to 15% speed improvement at the same power and up to 30% power reduction at the same speed as compared with N5 technology”

Kinda crazy to not pay 6% for these gains but that’s just me!

Well, there are lots of weasel words in there, as well as leaving out the error rate.

Only if your customers are willing to pay that much.

While Apple chips are highly sought after in the West, that's still a minor part of the worldwide market altogether (and while I'd be happy to go back to M1 Max, I couldn't care less for their glossy displays, shallow keyboards and sharp edges — not to mention incomplete Linux support).

Same here. My Thinkpad doesn't look as cool but it's so much better to work on. Amazing keyboard, matte screen that even has touch, no sharp edges. And it has PORTS!

Apple solved these issues somewhat with the new MBP but the keyboard and screen still sucks for me. Their new SoCs are great though.

... so? The customers they do have pay ridiculously high prices. Even a 6% rise of the full unit price would barely register, especially considering the increase in performance, which would probably easily justify 20%.

Or they could simply wait it out, use the new process on the next generation, and justify upgrades by the performance jump.

IOW, they can keep the cycle going for longer.

> Only if your customers are willing to pay that much.

Yeah, I think they probably are.

> While Apple chips are highly sought after in the West, that's still a minor part of the worldwide market altogether

It is, but it's also the part of the worldwide market that actually makes high profits.

Kinda crazy to not pay up to 6% for these up to gains.

I dont think TSMC was saying N3 costs 6% more than N5, they were saying N3 costs 6% more than N3 previously did. Presumably it was significantly more expensive than N5 even before the price hike.

Given that Apple is very competitive even in 5nm I'd say that, yes, yes, they can stay at that process for as long as they want (which is probably +2yrs let's say)

I don't think you even need a viable alternative to make this kind of threat. That's why we used to enforce antitrust laws.

So who would you be breaking up in this case and how do you “enforce anti-trust” laws on a Taiwanese company?

How would you break up Apple in this case? They can’t sell iPhones, iPads, Macs, Watches, monitors (their newest monitor has the same processor as the iPhone 11) and AppleTVs?

Would you break Apple up so each line of iPhones have to be a separate company?

A break up is only the most extreme application of anti-trust enforcement. Before that you block acquisitions, put constraints, review contracts, etc.

The last time that Apple acquired a company that could be seen as a competitor was in 1997 when it acquired Next.

What did they do with regards to TSMC that would be anti competitive? Invest money in a supplier to ensure that it had capacity?

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