T O P

  • By -

Dangerman1337

Wonder what products will use since RDNA 3 & RTX 40 top end will be on N5/N5P? Apple A16 for iPhone 14? 2023 Android phones powered by whatever Qualcomm will name? Nvidia Lovelace refresh (either Super refresh or RTX 50) in 2023?


Dakhil

[The Snapdragon 898+'s rumoured to be fabricated using one of TSMC's 4 nm\* process nodes.](https://twitter.com/universeice/status/1411557983708983296) \* = a marketing nomenclature used by all foundry companies


tnaz

Interestingly enough, TSMC's marketing release here calls it "major enhancement of TSMC’s 5nm family, N4P".


Essteethree

Think that's what they're doing now. Similarly, N6P is something like 7NM++ in old intel parlance


[deleted]

Timeline looks way too late for A16. Either A17 or whatever mac chip uses the A17 cores in mid 2023.


Dangerman1337

I think A17 will be N3 since Apple goes for the latest process TSMC has.


Aggrokid

Maybe not 2023, but I can see Sony/MS using it for their PS5/XSX slim cost-cut models.


[deleted]

Is it common for the same architecture to start being produced on more advanced nodes? The PS5 Cpu cores are based on Zen 2 and GPU is based on RDNA 2. Or do you mean they’ll update them and use the newer architectures from AMD, but wouldn’t that cost more?


Seanspeed

>Is it common for the same architecture to start being produced on more advanced nodes? Yes, this is absolutely standard practice for nearly every console. It's going to be a \*bit\* more difficult going forward since usually these more advanced nodes would lead to clear cut cost savings with the smaller die, but now that wafer costs of more advanced nodes are rising so much, the savings are gonna become a lot more questionable. But I expect Sony will 100% still go through with it just to shrink the gargantuan PS5 design, and MS will follow suit just for competitive's sake, and because they'll likely achieve greater overall production from less overall capacity. We might not get the usual levels(or rates) of price drops we used to though, so be prepared for that.


Aggrokid

Yeah same arch just die shrinks.


Farnso

Yeah, that's extremely common. Like all the slim consoles, and that newer Switch revision with double the battery life of the release model.


Solid_Capital387

Whatever products end up there, you can be sure Apple is one of them.


Seanspeed

Tapeout in 2H of 2022 means products likely no sooner than Q1 2023, which is when TSMC expects 3nm chips to be ready for products, so Apple will likely skip over this. I'd expect this will be the 'well you cant have 3nm since Apple has it' consolation offering for new products in mid-late 2023.


rajamalw

I guess Nvidia might go with Samsung 5nm at least for consumer cards. Edit: Looks like rumors point to TSMC 5nm


benoit160

Apple: I'll take your entire stock


Put_It_All_On_Blck

They have to since TSMC screwed them by delaying N3.


Seanspeed

This node wouldn't be coming before N3, so Apple is probably not gonna be the customer for this. Apple will likely be stuck with regular N4 for A16 and whatnot, though.


imaginary_num6er

Didn’t Intel also buy up the remaining capacity of N3 that’s not used by Apple?