One of TSMC's Biggest Customers Cuts 3nm Wafer Orders As Consumer Demand Deflates

[medi01]

The chips aren't as small as you think;

Most Apple chips are used in iphones, and that is around 80-100 square mm

200 million SOCs dwarfs AMD and Nvidia

50 million GPUs were sold in 2021, most of them 250+mm2, many much bigger (e.g. 3070 is about 400)
471 million CPUs were sold in 2021, each 80-100+ square mm. About fifth of that by AMD.

That doesn't count about 20 or so million (due to supply constraints, else they'd sell more) APUs used in PS5/Xbox.


Bigger chips also means worse yields, which also means, more wafers ordered/used.

200 million SOCs dwarfs AMD and Nvidia

It obviously doesn't.

 

[AnotherReader]

Most Apple chips are used in iphones, and that is around 80-100 square mm


50 million GPUs were sold in 2021, most of them 250+mm2, many much bigger (e.g. 3070 is about 400)
471 million CPUs were sold in 2021, each 80-100+ square mm. About fifth of that by AMD.

That doesn't count about 20 or so million (due to supply constraints, else they'd sell more) APUs used in PS5/Xbox.


Bigger chips also means worse yields, which also means, more wafers ordered/used.


It obviously doesn't.

Don't forget that nearly all of Nvidia's GPUs were made at Samsung. Let's assume that 40 million of those 50 million GPUs were sold by Nvidia. The bulk of those would have been 3060s, and the yield isn't as bad as you might think from a naive derivation from the defect rate. Each 3060 die is about 3x the size of a typical iPhone die so even if they were all made at TSMC, the volume would still be less than half of Apple. Even if all 40 million were 3080 and higher, then it would only about match Apple's volume.

Moreover, Apple is using more expensive nodes so just plain volumes don't tell the whole story. In addition, all iPhones use discrete modems which are another 70 to 85 mm^2 on leading edge nodes. Apple bought Intel's cellular unit to make their own modems; their wafer allocation will increase even more in the long term.

 

[The Von Matrices]

What? More like Apple overestimated the demand and their new Iphones are a flop.

The article referenced earlier was only reporting the iPhone 14 plus having poor sales. But that's one SKU, and it's also a weirdly placed SKU. It's not for the people who just want the cheapest iPhone but also not for people who want the best iPhone. I can see why it's not selling well. In my limited experience with the iPhone market I've noticed that the Pro models are where much of the market seems to be and I know a few Apple diehards who would never be caught alive with anything other than the most expensive Pro Max model. I wouldn't draw conclusions on the entire market from the sales of one weirdly placed SKU.