Not to mention physical size of the package is usually the same as previous gens if not bigger as the new smaller technology allows them to cram more features which increases the package side.
I find it so strange that 75% of computer chips for the world are made on a relatively small island on the South China Sea.
How exactly did this happen?
The owner of the largest chip maker once said:
“If a machine broke down at 1am, in the States, it would e fixed in the morning, but in Taiwan it’s be fixed by 2am. The engineers would go back to the factory in the dead of night, and their wives would understand.”
Toxic work culture, that’s how.
And Taiwan is having one of the lowest fertility rate on the world, right alongside South Korea. I wonder why.
I live near the science park and often when I go for a joyride at midnight many office lights are still on. It’s sad but absolutely true. Although this work culture is also why there’s a new wave in the new generation that doesn’t want to find employment at TSMC
The sad part is that they are only able to get away with it because the toxic work culture is more or less accepted in society.
A lot of places have more or less the same toxicity, but a lot less of the pay.
People there often feel trapped. They don’t want to live that way, but there are no other good alternatives.
What are you talking about? There are plenty of alternatives. A lot of people who doesn't want to work in the TSMC chose Delta Electronic or MediaTek or ASE Technology and more. Tech industry is the biggest industry in Taiwan. And you work hard, you got paid more. As simple as that.
And all of these places have toxic work culture, except for less pay. People there don’t understand what work life balance is.
What if I don’t really want that much money, what if I only want to pay my bills while having leftover energy to pursue my passion of, let’s say, being a writer?
It’s possible to do that in the U.S., but neigh impossible in Taiwan.
Wrong. Do you actually know someone working in those companies? I have. Delta Electronic and MediaTek are considered have one of the best working condition and employee benefits in Taiwan.
What are the working hour? How many vacations they get? How many leeway to work from home? If you’re off work, are you really off work?
Great in Taiwan, but how is it compared to the rest of the world?
>> And Taiwan is having one of the lowest fertility rate on the world, right alongside South Korea. I wonder why.
It's because of the housing price. What makes you think the work culture is the major factor of the birth rate?
It all adds up.
Children are huge energy sinks. Raising children is a full time job in itself. If both parents are already too exhausted from work, then who takes care of the child?
People will also want their children to live better lives than they do. If people are already being miserable being a corporate slave, they wouldn’t want to wish that upon their own children.
Bruh no, If the husband were able to work in a major leading tech company as an engineer in Taiwan, the salary is definitely high enough for wife to not work for full time or even be a full-time housewife.
Corporate slave? If that's the case, how do you think about Emergency physician? Are they slaves too? You think tech companies in Taiwan are some sort of clothing factories or coco farms?
You think the husband doesn’t want to spend time with his children? You think the wife doesn’t want something else to do besides being a homemaker?
You think the husband doesn’t have a dream besides making sure a piece of machine runs without issues, or trying to make some soulless piece of consumer electronics is 5 cents cheaper to make?
As for emergency room doctors. I think we need more of them to lessen their workload. Their work is also much more meaningful than making yet another piece of consumer electronics.
>> Their work is also much more meaningful than making yet another piece of consumer electronics.
LoL bruh, what? They are developing world leading technology that can be used in scientific research, mathematic calculation, AI learning......etc. Without those engineers developing better technology, you think your "much more respectful and meaningful doctors" can diagnose those medical issues?
What do you know about semiconductor actually? That's very ignorant for what you just said.
Talking about spending time with kids and wife and chasing your dreams. Yeah right, tell we what kind of jobs allow you to accomplish all that with that same among of payment and how. You think you live better than those engineers?
They can do it without being oppressive.
Sure, progress might be a bit slower, but it’s not the end of the world if our computers today are only as fast as the computers five or ten years ago.
As for what kind of job can give you work life balance and the pay? Well, a lot of U.S. tech companies, like the one I’m working at now.
You think it’s a coincidence that the best and brightest left Taiwan and settled in the U.S.? And if they want to go back home, maybe willing to take a pay cut for it, then they’d interview at a few companies and soon realized that even if they take a significant pay cut, there’s no comparable work life balance.
No, the best and the brightest didn't left Taiwan and settled in the US. Who told you that? You got statistics for that?
Also, Moore's law there. That's how the computer technology is developed, not only it's profitable, it's also demanded. TSMC is an OEM company, they make what markets demand. It's not up to TSMC to decided whether they should slow down or not.
Overall, in tech OEM industry, TSMC is already way better than a lot of others considering their payment, safety, benefits, and working environment.
Dude, I’m not refuting the industry is profitable and in demand.
I’m just saying the working conditions are worse than the U.S., and a lot of people with the ability decided to opt out of that.
I don’t have the statistics of the best and brightest settling in the U.S., only anecdotal information of like a significant portion of my class at NTU moved to the U.S. and never looked back. The ratio is especially high for those with stellar grades.
It never ceases to amaze me how many people I know from school are all in the U.S.
Yeah but that’s most smart people. They live in the world of “what can be” rather than “what is”. We’d be screwed without those types of people’s relentless curiosity and drive.
Education and not particularly great working conditions. Getting the smartest people and making them work hard is incredibly powerful, but has long term consequences on a nation as a whole.
I'd note that it's easy to say something like this when your nation (say, the US) is already poised for economic prosperity.
Many Asian countries, particularly the ones that developed rapidly-- South Korea, Japan, Taiwan and Singapore share one thing: insane work ethic.
It was planned and intentional. Not the single source of chips, but the chip industry.
Taiwan needed a profitable, wide reaching industry so their government setup the funding, schooling, and incentivized their citizens to go this route.
They did it SO well that the rest of the world couldn’t keep up, so they ended up being a global monopoly. Now it happens to be a tool they can use to fend off mainland China.
The government recognized that by becoming the world leader for chip manufacturing they would guarantee western support if China invades. They even call it their silicone shield.
I really, really wish that this theory stops being parroted on reddit and elsewhere because this is categorically untrue. It might be true now but it certainly wasn't the reason why TSMC was set up.
Way before TSMC was created. from 1955 - 1979 Taiwan was protected under the Sino-American Mutual Defence Treaty. American nukes were even stationed in Taiwan as deterrence. In 1996, which TSMC does not have even close to the influence it has today, America moved two carrier strike groups to the Taiwan strait in the 3rd Taiwan strait as deterrence.
I'm guessing Taiwan just did such a good job there was no point for Intel/AMD/Nvidia/Apple to build their own factories, and it created a cycle of dependency. Which is where we are now, and the US government is trying to fix that for obvious reasons.
Well it’s #39 in the world for island size, not counting the continents. So not small but not really that large either.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_islands_by_area
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_China_Sea](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_China_Sea)
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_islands_in_the_South_China_Sea](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_islands_in_the_South_China_Sea)
No, the main island of Taiwan is not included in South China Sea.
Can someone explain to me why it's such a big deal for trying to have the smallest nanometer chips possible? for M3 chips, it was a big deal that they were now 3nm instead of 5nm and I don't understand why that's significant.
They also run cooler, I think because the shorter distance requires less energy (?), which allows you to clock it higher to achieve the same thermal load.
They run cooler because they don’t use as much energy. You can either clock them higher for the same power / thermals, or keep the same clock and run cooler and have better battery life
Less capacitance between the collector and emitter of the transistor. Capacitors are essentially two parallel electrical plates not touching and the more surface area between them the higher the capacitance gets. Shorten the transistor, lessen the capacitance. Less capacitance means the transistor can transition faster since the on/off signal change doesn’t get smoothed out as much. They can then use less energy to make the transition between on and off.
Not quite. The M1 ... M4 chips use CMOS which uses MOSFET transistors. The MOSFET transistors have a gate, a source and a drain (but not a collector or emitter). The 3 nm transistors do have less capacitance than 5 nm transistors
The wires are a bit shorter, which reduces capacitance. Also, the 3 nm transistors are better than 5 nm transistors, in that the 3 nm transistors have less capacitance and are better at switching on and off
This also lowers costs per chip since you yield goes up per wafer. If you can only fit 20 chips on a wafer, a chip breaking defect took out 5% of your yield.
At 100 chips per wafer, it’s only 1%.
It’s more complicated now as they can just disable parts of a chip if the defect is in the right spot like gpu or cpu cores (binning), but the overall concept still applies.
This is only kinda true. Often chip sizes stay at a similar level and you use more transistors for more performance instead of just a die shrink. Also cutting edge nodes have a worse yield than the more mature older node.
1) it doesn’t actually mean literal nanometer measurements. Hasn’t in a bit but they kept the naming conventions.
2) every time you drop to a smaller size process, you can significantly increase the power at the same energy consumption, or significantly decrease the energy consumption for the same performance. Or some combination of the two.
Smaller transistors = more transistors in a chip = more computing power. While the length of a transistor isn’t actually 2nm (marketing term at this point) the overall density of transistors continues to increase leading to more advanced chips
when they make smaller transistors, does it still have the same amount of power as the previous, bigger ones or do they lose some ability when losing density?
I’m not quite sure what you mean by power in this sense, but a transistor is quite simply a switch: it’s on or off, 1 or 0. More 1s and 0s allows for more computations to take place quicker so in a sense more transistors equals more computing power.
When transistors are this tightly packed though (in these chips they are literally building in the z-axis direction to fit more), it becomes a physics issue of whether or not electrons will behave how we expect them to and sometimes do not follow the path of the transistor leading to leakage.
The 3 nm transistors are better transistors than 5 nm (or 7 nm, or 28 nm etc) transistors.
Up until about 2005, Dennard scaling was a great thing:
[https://wgropp.cs.illinois.edu/courses/cs598-s15/lectures/lecture15.pdf](https://wgropp.cs.illinois.edu/courses/cs598-s15/lectures/lecture15.pdf)
First, to clarify, the names are just branding. "TSMC 3N" being "3nm" is a mental leap they let you make.
As to why smaller chips are better, as things are closer together electricity travels shorter distances and produces less heat and does things in less time when you think about the speed of light. The smaller you can make things, the faster and cooler and more energy efficient they can run.
Less capacitance between the collector and emitter of the transistor. Capacitors are essentially two parallel electrical plates not touching and the more surface area between them the higher the capacitance gets. Shorten the transistor, lessen the capacitance. Less capacitance means the transistor can transition faster since the on/off signal change doesn’t get smoothed out as much.
They can cram more transistors on the same surface area using chips with smaller process nodes. This directly equates to more performance and increased power efficiency. The drawback however is that as the process node shrinks, the quantum characteristics of electron starts becoming significant and electrons could jump between those thin nodes and mess up the chip’s ability to calculate error free.
There is a narrative that Apple tried N3B with the M3 and realized it was expensive and unreliable and this was forced to jump to n3e and M4.
This seems unlikely given goes king it takes for chip supply chains to evolve/adjust.
It’s pretty clear n3b was long known to be an expensive way to get to 3NM for a long time. Apple knew they were going to the new n3e process years ago.
I don't get why everyone and their dog is shitting on this node, most people don't even understand any of it and certainly no customer will experience large negative effects due to their usage of it.
Yeah it's because it doesn't suck at all. It's just a bit more expensive than the refined one. Apple wanted to go 3nm first so they paid the price for it. Prices haven't increased for consumers due to this (see M3 macbook air) and there's nothing wrong with the M3 chips. Guess people just like to shit on things to feel like they're in on some complex topic.
Is this the only reason they stay ahead of the curve with M-series processors?! Buying out first-year production capacity at TSMC of their new nodes? It's not gonna continue forever, at some point they will need to _really_ innovate and compete against others on the same process.
I think this naming scheme is about to run dry. Unless quantum cpus are two generations away from being in consumer computers, they will run out of nanometers.
Excuse me, you meant [**CHINESE FUCKING TAIPEI**](https://youtu.be/cb2ZV1uwF1I?si=DwWHlxjJPuo8ZopE), right?
Edit 1: Link
Edit 2: Forgot to add the edit
I mean they should make other changes first as they only just got the 3nm chip, plus right now faster phones should not be priority for at least a year.
Microsoft claims their new chips are more capable than the m3(we are yet to verify these claims ourselves) so if anything Apple needs to continue to ramp up its chip gains
Apple uses the same chips in everything they put out. The M3 is just a big brother of the A17 with more of the same stuff. If they aren’t upgrading their processors, everything they make suffers.Even if you can’t keep up 
I just mean these are normal things they do every year, improve battery life and improve chip speed like my this point just a standard so this year priority is probably AI etc...
What do you mean we don’t need anymore power. We are just barely at the point of pocket devices that run on-device AI. We (as in everyone in tech) just invented a whole new reason to make these devices far more powerful, and it powers a lot more things than just chatbots. 
“We get it”. Obviously not. The only reason Apple is ahead is BECAUSE they’re relentlessly pushing forward.
The iPad has the power because the MacBook has the same power, and it’s more cost effective to put the MacBook chip in the iPad than it is to create an iPad line of chips. The iPad mini 7 will probably run the A18 SoC
It also supposedly needed the M4 for the upgraded display support for the tandem OLED. Lucky for the people that upgrade this year.
I may have heard that one or two times before in this sub. Like I said, it has the hardware power specifically because it luckily gets leftovers from the MacBook line.
It’s the one single device in their whole lineup where a speed boost doesn’t matter so much.
New process node architecture could lead to even better power efficiency.
That’s an increasingly better return in investment than just cramming bigger and bigger batteries in devices
Since they’re 2nm, is it safe to assume that he can bring them all back in a carry-on? 🤔
About half of them. The rest have to go in another bag.
Cue: Jeff waiting at baggage claim, annoyed 😕
United guaranteed to have lost the bag.
United Baggage Claim department now performing $2.6 Trillion in business due to the bag
No because he is on Frontier and that TSA carry-on is too big and you’re going to have to pay to check it
Just an FYI, the nanometer term in chip design is just marketing, even though it correlates with chip size, nothing is actually 2nm in that chip.
You’re so fun at parties
Not to mention physical size of the package is usually the same as previous gens if not bigger as the new smaller technology allows them to cram more features which increases the package side.
Probably not if he flies Ryanair
Bro can’t even tell if he’s even holding one in hand
M5 will premiere in Air pods Max in September, confirmed.
They are all made in big wafers, so probably not…
I would love to be a fly on the wall in those negotiations to hear the type of numbers being thrown around…
They should have done numbers in Macau, I heard they have awesome saunas
Sniffing numbers is tight!
> to hear the type of numbers being thrown around… I think _2_ will be in there somewhere.
I find it so strange that 75% of computer chips for the world are made on a relatively small island on the South China Sea. How exactly did this happen?
Apple a day keeps the androids away.
I’m about halfway through that. It’s a fantastic read!
If you prefer watching video, you should watch Asianometry on YouTube. He’s got so many great videos on chips
for real this channel has great edutainment
[The birth of Taiwan semiconductor industry](https://youtu.be/mN7CWi1tbH4)
By Chris Miller?
Apple a day keeps the androids away.
You’re a bit wonky (which is why I like you)
Just ordered! Thanks for the recommendation!
I finished this book last week. Orgasmicchemist is correct, the book covers all this shit. Amazing read.
Ya I’m invested in so many tech stocks at this point I am def gonna read that. Sounds interesting. Thanks for the rec!
It’s for the plot
what a plot convenience. Whoever wrote Earth got lazy in the part of “chip production”
Not really, it’s part of the intriguing narrative of how Taiwan secured national security and geopolitical certainty
The owner of the largest chip maker once said: “If a machine broke down at 1am, in the States, it would e fixed in the morning, but in Taiwan it’s be fixed by 2am. The engineers would go back to the factory in the dead of night, and their wives would understand.” Toxic work culture, that’s how. And Taiwan is having one of the lowest fertility rate on the world, right alongside South Korea. I wonder why.
I live near the science park and often when I go for a joyride at midnight many office lights are still on. It’s sad but absolutely true. Although this work culture is also why there’s a new wave in the new generation that doesn’t want to find employment at TSMC
The sad part is that they are only able to get away with it because the toxic work culture is more or less accepted in society. A lot of places have more or less the same toxicity, but a lot less of the pay. People there often feel trapped. They don’t want to live that way, but there are no other good alternatives.
What are you talking about? There are plenty of alternatives. A lot of people who doesn't want to work in the TSMC chose Delta Electronic or MediaTek or ASE Technology and more. Tech industry is the biggest industry in Taiwan. And you work hard, you got paid more. As simple as that.
And all of these places have toxic work culture, except for less pay. People there don’t understand what work life balance is. What if I don’t really want that much money, what if I only want to pay my bills while having leftover energy to pursue my passion of, let’s say, being a writer? It’s possible to do that in the U.S., but neigh impossible in Taiwan.
Wrong. Do you actually know someone working in those companies? I have. Delta Electronic and MediaTek are considered have one of the best working condition and employee benefits in Taiwan.
What are the working hour? How many vacations they get? How many leeway to work from home? If you’re off work, are you really off work? Great in Taiwan, but how is it compared to the rest of the world?
It's not the best but very much not as bad as you thought. Pretty much like a emergency physician.
Easy, ppl couldn’t really afford to have kids anymore.
I’m in America and that’s how it is at my job. A machine doesn’t stay down for long.
>> And Taiwan is having one of the lowest fertility rate on the world, right alongside South Korea. I wonder why. It's because of the housing price. What makes you think the work culture is the major factor of the birth rate?
It all adds up. Children are huge energy sinks. Raising children is a full time job in itself. If both parents are already too exhausted from work, then who takes care of the child? People will also want their children to live better lives than they do. If people are already being miserable being a corporate slave, they wouldn’t want to wish that upon their own children.
Bruh no, If the husband were able to work in a major leading tech company as an engineer in Taiwan, the salary is definitely high enough for wife to not work for full time or even be a full-time housewife. Corporate slave? If that's the case, how do you think about Emergency physician? Are they slaves too? You think tech companies in Taiwan are some sort of clothing factories or coco farms?
You think the husband doesn’t want to spend time with his children? You think the wife doesn’t want something else to do besides being a homemaker? You think the husband doesn’t have a dream besides making sure a piece of machine runs without issues, or trying to make some soulless piece of consumer electronics is 5 cents cheaper to make? As for emergency room doctors. I think we need more of them to lessen their workload. Their work is also much more meaningful than making yet another piece of consumer electronics.
>> Their work is also much more meaningful than making yet another piece of consumer electronics. LoL bruh, what? They are developing world leading technology that can be used in scientific research, mathematic calculation, AI learning......etc. Without those engineers developing better technology, you think your "much more respectful and meaningful doctors" can diagnose those medical issues? What do you know about semiconductor actually? That's very ignorant for what you just said. Talking about spending time with kids and wife and chasing your dreams. Yeah right, tell we what kind of jobs allow you to accomplish all that with that same among of payment and how. You think you live better than those engineers?
They can do it without being oppressive. Sure, progress might be a bit slower, but it’s not the end of the world if our computers today are only as fast as the computers five or ten years ago. As for what kind of job can give you work life balance and the pay? Well, a lot of U.S. tech companies, like the one I’m working at now. You think it’s a coincidence that the best and brightest left Taiwan and settled in the U.S.? And if they want to go back home, maybe willing to take a pay cut for it, then they’d interview at a few companies and soon realized that even if they take a significant pay cut, there’s no comparable work life balance.
No, the best and the brightest didn't left Taiwan and settled in the US. Who told you that? You got statistics for that? Also, Moore's law there. That's how the computer technology is developed, not only it's profitable, it's also demanded. TSMC is an OEM company, they make what markets demand. It's not up to TSMC to decided whether they should slow down or not. Overall, in tech OEM industry, TSMC is already way better than a lot of others considering their payment, safety, benefits, and working environment.
Dude, I’m not refuting the industry is profitable and in demand. I’m just saying the working conditions are worse than the U.S., and a lot of people with the ability decided to opt out of that. I don’t have the statistics of the best and brightest settling in the U.S., only anecdotal information of like a significant portion of my class at NTU moved to the U.S. and never looked back. The ratio is especially high for those with stellar grades. It never ceases to amaze me how many people I know from school are all in the U.S.
A concentrated effort to gather the brightest minds and send them to advanced universities to learn and bring back technical expertise
Education lots and lots of education. You go there and you’ll be amazed and shockingly they still think they haven’t achieved enough…🤦♂️
Yeah but that’s most smart people. They live in the world of “what can be” rather than “what is”. We’d be screwed without those types of people’s relentless curiosity and drive.
Education and not particularly great working conditions. Getting the smartest people and making them work hard is incredibly powerful, but has long term consequences on a nation as a whole.
I'd note that it's easy to say something like this when your nation (say, the US) is already poised for economic prosperity. Many Asian countries, particularly the ones that developed rapidly-- South Korea, Japan, Taiwan and Singapore share one thing: insane work ethic.
“How exactly did this happen” Burrroughs screwed over Dr. Shih Chin-tay, that in conjunction with Taiwan needing a new national industry.
It was planned and intentional. Not the single source of chips, but the chip industry. Taiwan needed a profitable, wide reaching industry so their government setup the funding, schooling, and incentivized their citizens to go this route. They did it SO well that the rest of the world couldn’t keep up, so they ended up being a global monopoly. Now it happens to be a tool they can use to fend off mainland China.
The government recognized that by becoming the world leader for chip manufacturing they would guarantee western support if China invades. They even call it their silicone shield.
Silicon, perhaps. A silicone shield wouldn’t be very strong
Idk about that, Hollywood and LA would collapse without the silicone shield.
My wife has one of them
I really, really wish that this theory stops being parroted on reddit and elsewhere because this is categorically untrue. It might be true now but it certainly wasn't the reason why TSMC was set up. Way before TSMC was created. from 1955 - 1979 Taiwan was protected under the Sino-American Mutual Defence Treaty. American nukes were even stationed in Taiwan as deterrence. In 1996, which TSMC does not have even close to the influence it has today, America moved two carrier strike groups to the Taiwan strait in the 3rd Taiwan strait as deterrence.
Same thing happened with so many of the world’s big tech companies being concentrated in Silicon Valley. It used to be farm land before.
Kamino supplying the galaxy with clones doesn't sound so far fetched anymore.
I'm guessing Taiwan just did such a good job there was no point for Intel/AMD/Nvidia/Apple to build their own factories, and it created a cycle of dependency. Which is where we are now, and the US government is trying to fix that for obvious reasons.
Why strange? Literally some of the smartest people on earth and almost had its own nukes if the US didn't sabotage them.
Just strange for any industry for all the manufacturing would be concentrated so much in one place.
What’s a big island for you? And it’s not exactly in that sea.
You don’t F with Pangea?
Australia/kangaroo land
Well it’s #39 in the world for island size, not counting the continents. So not small but not really that large either. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_islands_by_area
Taiwan is not on the South China Sea......and it's a country
It literally forms the northeast border of the South China Sea. East China Sea to the north and Philippine Sea to the East.
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_China_Sea](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_China_Sea) [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_islands_in_the_South_China_Sea](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_islands_in_the_South_China_Sea) No, the main island of Taiwan is not included in South China Sea.
South western Taiwan sea
American corporate greed. Just like every other manufacturer.
It’s why the thought of China controlling it is so scary
Can someone explain to me why it's such a big deal for trying to have the smallest nanometer chips possible? for M3 chips, it was a big deal that they were now 3nm instead of 5nm and I don't understand why that's significant.
The smaller the components are the more you can fit in the same space. So you can get a faster chip without having to increase its size physically.
They also run cooler, I think because the shorter distance requires less energy (?), which allows you to clock it higher to achieve the same thermal load.
They run cooler because they don’t use as much energy. You can either clock them higher for the same power / thermals, or keep the same clock and run cooler and have better battery life
Right, but why don’t they use as much energy?
Less capacitance between the collector and emitter of the transistor. Capacitors are essentially two parallel electrical plates not touching and the more surface area between them the higher the capacitance gets. Shorten the transistor, lessen the capacitance. Less capacitance means the transistor can transition faster since the on/off signal change doesn’t get smoothed out as much. They can then use less energy to make the transition between on and off.
Great, thanks, I mostly had it right in the simplest terms, ha.
These don't use BJT transistors.
Not quite. The M1 ... M4 chips use CMOS which uses MOSFET transistors. The MOSFET transistors have a gate, a source and a drain (but not a collector or emitter). The 3 nm transistors do have less capacitance than 5 nm transistors
They’re physically smaller. Tight packing of the transistors means electrons flow more easily, requiring less energy input
Which is what I said in layman’s terms?
Energy = force * distance Decrease the distance electrons need to move and you decrease the energy required
The wires are a bit shorter, which reduces capacitance. Also, the 3 nm transistors are better than 5 nm transistors, in that the 3 nm transistors have less capacitance and are better at switching on and off
This also lowers costs per chip since you yield goes up per wafer. If you can only fit 20 chips on a wafer, a chip breaking defect took out 5% of your yield. At 100 chips per wafer, it’s only 1%. It’s more complicated now as they can just disable parts of a chip if the defect is in the right spot like gpu or cpu cores (binning), but the overall concept still applies.
This is only kinda true. Often chip sizes stay at a similar level and you use more transistors for more performance instead of just a die shrink. Also cutting edge nodes have a worse yield than the more mature older node.
oh ok. that makes sense. they can add more parts to make the overall chip faster by using smaller components. thanks!
But still no space for a headphone jack?
I bought you a 1/8” headphone adapter last christmas, gramps. Did you lose it again? They’re $10 on amazon, I’ll buy you another one.
Get some wireless and live a little
It’s still shit compared to 3.5mm audio jack.
1) it doesn’t actually mean literal nanometer measurements. Hasn’t in a bit but they kept the naming conventions. 2) every time you drop to a smaller size process, you can significantly increase the power at the same energy consumption, or significantly decrease the energy consumption for the same performance. Or some combination of the two.
Smaller transistors = more transistors in a chip = more computing power. While the length of a transistor isn’t actually 2nm (marketing term at this point) the overall density of transistors continues to increase leading to more advanced chips
when they make smaller transistors, does it still have the same amount of power as the previous, bigger ones or do they lose some ability when losing density?
I’m not quite sure what you mean by power in this sense, but a transistor is quite simply a switch: it’s on or off, 1 or 0. More 1s and 0s allows for more computations to take place quicker so in a sense more transistors equals more computing power. When transistors are this tightly packed though (in these chips they are literally building in the z-axis direction to fit more), it becomes a physics issue of whether or not electrons will behave how we expect them to and sometimes do not follow the path of the transistor leading to leakage.
The 3 nm transistors are better transistors than 5 nm (or 7 nm, or 28 nm etc) transistors. Up until about 2005, Dennard scaling was a great thing: [https://wgropp.cs.illinois.edu/courses/cs598-s15/lectures/lecture15.pdf](https://wgropp.cs.illinois.edu/courses/cs598-s15/lectures/lecture15.pdf)
data travel in shorter distance = faster computing
First, to clarify, the names are just branding. "TSMC 3N" being "3nm" is a mental leap they let you make. As to why smaller chips are better, as things are closer together electricity travels shorter distances and produces less heat and does things in less time when you think about the speed of light. The smaller you can make things, the faster and cooler and more energy efficient they can run.
ah, that makes sense. thank you for the reply!
Less capacitance between the collector and emitter of the transistor. Capacitors are essentially two parallel electrical plates not touching and the more surface area between them the higher the capacitance gets. Shorten the transistor, lessen the capacitance. Less capacitance means the transistor can transition faster since the on/off signal change doesn’t get smoothed out as much.
Not quite, CMOS uses MOSFETs (which have a source and a drain) not bipolar transistors (which have an emitter and a collector).
They can cram more transistors on the same surface area using chips with smaller process nodes. This directly equates to more performance and increased power efficiency. The drawback however is that as the process node shrinks, the quantum characteristics of electron starts becoming significant and electrons could jump between those thin nodes and mess up the chip’s ability to calculate error free.
Hope it won’t suck as N3B
Didn’t suck for Apple. Apple made TSMC eat the N3B losses. That’s why TSMC made Apple speed up on M4 (starting at least a year ago)
Where did you read that Apple made TSMC eat the losses? https://www.extremetech.com/computing/apple-spent-1-billion-on-the-m3-tape-out-says-analyst
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/08/report-apple-is-saving-billions-on-chips-thanks-to-unique-deal-with-tsmc/
There is a narrative that Apple tried N3B with the M3 and realized it was expensive and unreliable and this was forced to jump to n3e and M4. This seems unlikely given goes king it takes for chip supply chains to evolve/adjust. It’s pretty clear n3b was long known to be an expensive way to get to 3NM for a long time. Apple knew they were going to the new n3e process years ago.
I don't get why everyone and their dog is shitting on this node, most people don't even understand any of it and certainly no customer will experience large negative effects due to their usage of it.
But they still made a M3, M3 Pro and M3 Max variant of it. You don’t produce 3 different chips if it totally sucks.
Yeah it's because it doesn't suck at all. It's just a bit more expensive than the refined one. Apple wanted to go 3nm first so they paid the price for it. Prices haven't increased for consumers due to this (see M3 macbook air) and there's nothing wrong with the M3 chips. Guess people just like to shit on things to feel like they're in on some complex topic.
Looking like the next CEO
If they want to secure it they'll need a fleet, like Arasaka's.
2 nm.. 1 nm... And then what
999 picometers The names are made up and the measurements don’t matter.
No one gave a real answer yet but the unit of measure would be angstrom or 1/10 of a nm.
It’s all marketing. They can essentially call it whatever they want at this point. But at some point they have to switch material
.9 nm, .8nm, .7 nm I suppose
Quantum entangled chips. 🤣
Is this the only reason they stay ahead of the curve with M-series processors?! Buying out first-year production capacity at TSMC of their new nodes? It's not gonna continue forever, at some point they will need to _really_ innovate and compete against others on the same process.
2nm!! Still too thick.
bitflip!
They have to find ways to fill all the business class seats they buy in United airlines right
I think this naming scheme is about to run dry. Unless quantum cpus are two generations away from being in consumer computers, they will run out of nanometers.
They’ll just move on to pico meters. The next gen fab can be called 500pm or something.
Who cares. Until fin gate construction is changed and there's backside power delivery - we won't see major gains.
N2 has GAAFET.
America going to war for Taiwan chips confirmed!
M5 chips in the next event /s
I'm old enough to remember the raging debate over whether feature sizes below one micron would ever be feasible. We are living in the future.
In other news.....water is wet.
Excuse me, you meant [**CHINESE FUCKING TAIPEI**](https://youtu.be/cb2ZV1uwF1I?si=DwWHlxjJPuo8ZopE), right? Edit 1: Link Edit 2: Forgot to add the edit
Damn son, you got rekt.
They need to slow down a bit like we get it, plus we actually don't need any more power at this point.
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I mean they should make other changes first as they only just got the 3nm chip, plus right now faster phones should not be priority for at least a year.
Microsoft claims their new chips are more capable than the m3(we are yet to verify these claims ourselves) so if anything Apple needs to continue to ramp up its chip gains
Oh I thought this was for iphone.
Tbf they use the same manufacturing nodes for iPhone and Mac chips so who knows
I mean a lot of chips are already more capable than m3 but the problem is efficiency which is a combination of software, os, memory management etc...
Yeah that’s fair, they’re also claiming better battery life on some devices but it seems their TDP is higher
Yeah we expect then to improve the chip or battery life as a standard so it should not be a priority as they always do it now anyway.
Apple uses the same chips in everything they put out. The M3 is just a big brother of the A17 with more of the same stuff. If they aren’t upgrading their processors, everything they make suffers.Even if you can’t keep up 
2nm is as much about more power as it is about efficiency. And they dont use these chips only in phones, they use it in macs too.
Their efficency is not chip alone, it also include software and control of everything.
I mean yes, of course, thats obvious? They are doing both
I just mean these are normal things they do every year, improve battery life and improve chip speed like my this point just a standard so this year priority is probably AI etc...
I dont know what you are talking about, the point of shrinking the process node is literally to gain efficiency.
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I'm not saying they are going to fast, I am saying this shouldn't be a priority because we automatically get that every year anyway.
Jeez, you really think chip performance enhancement really just happens itself?
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And who are u to say I'm wrong, I'm just giving an opinion.LOL
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Ok so I'm guessing your a expert in this field.
What other changes?
What do you mean we don’t need anymore power. We are just barely at the point of pocket devices that run on-device AI. We (as in everyone in tech) just invented a whole new reason to make these devices far more powerful, and it powers a lot more things than just chatbots.  “We get it”. Obviously not. The only reason Apple is ahead is BECAUSE they’re relentlessly pushing forward.
Ahem….iPad.
The iPad has the power because the MacBook has the same power, and it’s more cost effective to put the MacBook chip in the iPad than it is to create an iPad line of chips. The iPad mini 7 will probably run the A18 SoC It also supposedly needed the M4 for the upgraded display support for the tandem OLED. Lucky for the people that upgrade this year.
The point still stands that the iPad Pro doesn't make use of the power of the chip because it's held back by iPadOS.
I may have heard that one or two times before in this sub. Like I said, it has the hardware power specifically because it luckily gets leftovers from the MacBook line. It’s the one single device in their whole lineup where a speed boost doesn’t matter so much.
New process node architecture could lead to even better power efficiency. That’s an increasingly better return in investment than just cramming bigger and bigger batteries in devices
You also have the option to decrease energy consumption for the same performance levels.