Comment by bigyabai
20 hours ago
I doubt TSMC has a choice. Any fab allocation Apple can pay for, Nvidia can afford twice over. With that kind of money Nvidia could swallow the cost of 40% broken dies and still turn out higher hardware margins than any 2nm iPhone ever could. Neither the iPhone Air nor Vision Pro justify Apple's push to dominate the latest nodes.
Novelty applications like "performance smartphone hardware" will have to wait on the sidelines. The datacenter needs it more than Apple or Qualcomm, and they've brought the beaucoup bucks to prove it.
> Novelty applications like "performance smartphone hardware" will have to wait on the sidelines.
A quarter of your revenue isn't a "novelty".
> Apple is by far TSMC’s largest customer, accounting for 23% of the Taiwanese chipmaker’s almost $72 billion in revenue in 2022.
https://archive.ph/yfGLp
You don't throw away a long term partner over short term AI bubble gains if you intend to be a long term business.
You're right that money talks. I just think you're forgetting which side has more leverage in this game.
Apple is most certainly not being thrown away, merely asked to compete at the market price if they want the latest node. Anything else is wasted money from TSMC's perspective, they still make legacy nodes Apple can perfectly well use for the iPhone if they want to save cash.
At most, TSMC will let Nvidia pay up front to build an additional Fab dedicated fully or partially to their use.
The way Apple already does:
> The investment includes “a multibillion-dollar commitment from Apple to produce advanced silicon in TSMC’s Fab 21 facility in Arizona,” according to Apple’s February announcement. The plan is to double Apple’s Advanced Manufacturing Fund from $5 billion to $10 billion, with TSMC Arizona a primary beneficiary.
https://www.aztechcouncil.org/tucson-chipmaker-tsmc-arizona-...
They aren't going to throw away a long term partner for short term gains.
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