This site says N3 is 40% more expensive than earlier processes.
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Although the demand for the personal computer (PC) market is sluggish, Apple will still launch a number of new models in the next few months, and Apple will also accelerate the research and development and mass production of the second-generation Apple Silicon's M2 processor. According to foreign power and industry news, Apple's M2 processor will fight a core battle and may be launched. 48 core's most advanced M2 Extreme rushes to attack advanced PC and workstation applications, and wafer OEM leader TSMC is expected to monopolize 3 nm wafer OEM orders.
The M2 processor recently launched by Apple adopts the second generation of TSMC 5-nm process, with an 8-core central processor (CPU) and a 10-core drawing processor (GPU). Compared with the previous generation of M1 processors, the CPU speed and GPU performance have been significantly improved, the memory bandwidth is increased by 50%, and the unified memory capacity is supported up to 24GB.
Affected by global inflation, PC demand is sluggish in the second half of the year, but the sales of the new MacBook Air and the new 13-inch MacBook Pro equipped with M2 processors are better than expected. Apple plans to launch the new MacBook Pro and Mac mini in the next few months. And Mac Pro, and equipped with an upgraded M2 series processor.
According to foreign power and industry sources, in order to separate from the x86 architecture PC market and strive for market share, Apple's subsequent M2 processors will fight a core battle, improve the number of processor cores to increase computing performance, and highlight the low power consumption advantages of Arm architecture processors. Among them, the R&D M2 Pro processor codenamed Rhodes Chop is equipped with a 10-core CPU and a 20-core GPU, which is produced using TSMC 3 nm.
Like last year's M1 series processors, Apple will also launch a M2 Max processor codenamed Rhodes 1C, equipped with a 12-core CPU and a 38-core GPU, and will launch a M2 Ultra processor codenamed Rhodes 2C, CPU and GP. The number of U cores is double that of M2 Max.
Due to the maturity of the chiplet design and the smooth progress of TSMC's advanced packaging technology, it is rumored in the market that Apple may launch an M2 Extreme processor that integrates 2 M2 Max next year, which will look at 48-core CPUs and 152 core GPUs. The industry pointed out that Apple M2 Pro/Max/Extreme and other series of processors are mass-produced using TSMC's 3-nm process, and if the M2 Extreme news is true, Apple's PC processor performance will catch up with Intel next year and become the hegemon in the Arm architecture processor market.
TSMC does not comment on customers receiving orders, but pointed out at a recent legal person briefing that it has been observed that many customers have participated in 3nm, and the number of design finalization in the first two years before mass production will be more than twice that of 5 nm. TSMC is working closely with the machine suppliers to meet the challenges of machine delivery and prepare more production capacity for the 3nm process. In order to support the strong demand of customers in 2023, 2024 and the future, there is confidence that the 3nami family will become another large-scale and long-term process node of TSMC.
appleinsider.com
