Apple to Buy TSMC’s Entire Supply of 3nm Chips for 2023::Apple will receive all of TSMC’s first-generation 3-nanometer process chips this year for upcoming iPhones, Macs, and iPads, according to…
We need more fabs. Entire world’s supply of 3nm blown on iPhones
Intel were made to share their technology due to a monopoly not too long ago. Same should be the case here
The tech isn’t the hurdle. The industrial capacity is. It’s not a good investment due to time and cost of building another full facility. That’s why the Biden Administration was so gung ho about the subsidies and tax incentives in the CHIPS act; a government actor is needed to make the math make sense.
Absolutely, I agree with that but if Apple are the only ones that can use this tech as was suggested by another commentor then they should be made share the tech for the sake of innovation and progress.
I agree with government intervention here but think the Biden admin went a ways into protectionism which is a different conversation. I don’t think these Fabs are going out of date anytime soon so we should be building them globally, we are screaming out for more chips and the more that are built the cheaper they will get.
The issue is that the US doesn’t own all of the relevant patents, just most of them. It’s hard to apply US anti-monopoly laws against a company based in the Netherlands that primarily sells its products to Korea and Taiwan. All the US can do is threaten to pull the EUV-LLC patents that the department of energy developed.
Sounds like there isn’t anyone able to use the 3nm technology anyhow so not sure how big of a deal it is.
I do wish they weren’t tied to Apple technology but if they’re ahead of the game they’re ahead of the game.
Fun fact, the X-nm naming convention doesn’t actually describe the size of the process. It comes from traditional scaling predictions that described a 70% scaling every 2 years.