> The Mac Pro numbers certainly wouldn't pay for such a CPU development.
Again, though, what exactly does "development" mean here? Apple is already fabless. TSMC makes 32-core chips for AMD, so that scale is not new to them.
You will need to buy different set of tools to work and design for TSMC 's node. And while it is still from TSMC, the node for Desktop ( High Performance ) will be different to Phone / Tablet ( Low Power ). The cost of designing and testing a 5nm chips is roughly a billion. For iPhone that is spread out over 200M unit over its life time, or roughly $5 per chip excluding the actual cost of wafer.
For Mac you are looking at 25M unit per year, with TDP going from 15W to 250W. Apple could follow the same path as AMD and make one die to fit all. But in reality it is waste of engineering recourse and focus for little benefits.
> the node for Desktop ( High Performance ) will be different to Phone / Tablet ( Low Power )
The iPhone CPUs are already competitive with Intel chips. They've got incredible single-core performance, great memory bandwidth, and solid 64-bit and SIMD support. What specific feature of a "high performance" node would they require that they aren't using for iPhones now? They've been pushing the limits on allegedly "mobile"-oriented architectures for years.
Every time this comes up, I hear from the naysayers "Yes, Apple is great at mobile, but desktop is a different game", but then also "Apple's mobile chips are faster than many Intel desktop chips". The skeptics sound awfully similar to those who said "Apple is great at iPods but smartphones are a completely different game".
> The cost of designing and testing a 5nm chips is roughly a billion.
AFAICT, nobody in the world has a production 5nm chip yet. How can you put a price on something that nobody has successfully produced yet?
If I were Apple and I were confident that just throwing $1B at it would solve all the engineering problems, I would absolutely do it. $40 per Mac for the best CPU (and independence from Intel) sounds like a steal.
>The iPhone CPUs are already competitive with Intel chips.
In selected benchmarks. That is like saying the Qualcomm ARM Sever Chips are already competitive with Intel Chips. But it is pretty close, at least to the point for most consumer usage it doesn't matter.
>The iPhone CPUs are already competitive with Intel chips.
>What specific feature of a "high performance" node
At sub 10W ( The TDP for iPhone and iPad Pro ), not at 15W+ or 250W on the Mac Pro. You will require different tools, nodes, design guidelines operating at those TDP. No one is saying Apple cant do it, the question is if it make any financial sense doing it.
>AFAICT, nobody in the world has a production 5nm chip yet. How can you put a price on something that nobody has successfully produced yet?
The lead time for designing a chip / SoC with new node is roughly 2-3 years. Apple are already working ( finalising ) on 5nm SoC for next year, and they already knew the basic costing, ( excluding yield issues ). 3nm Costing Projection are also already known and are being worked on as we speak.
>If I were Apple and I were confident that just throwing $1B at it would solve all the engineering problems, I would absolutely do it. $40 per Mac for the best CPU (and independence from Intel) sounds like a steal.
Quoting myself excluding the actual cost of wafer. and yield. Apple would have made the jump if it really only cost them $40.
Well, the process of designing the chip to fabricate. This means paying a lot of electrical engineers to design the chip, probably paying for several iterations of lithography masks. Yes, TSMC certainly can make any chip of the desired size - they are already making enough of those - but the development is very expensive. The Mac Pro by itself is certainly not selling in high enough numbers to pay for such a development and considering how long Apple neglected the pro, I am somewhat dubious they would be willing to spend a huge amount of effort on it.
Again, though, what exactly does "development" mean here? Apple is already fabless. TSMC makes 32-core chips for AMD, so that scale is not new to them.