Intel will reportedly be using N3B for Lunar Lake and likely Arrow Lake too. Presumably Apple is eating up N3E capacity. Also … while it’s true that N3B was delayed and reportedly suffers from poorer yields than expected and so forth, I think people are going a little overboard on how “bad” it is. It’s still finding customers and likely will continue to do so.
People are throwing around words like "flawed" when referring to N3B and M3. It isn't flawed at all. The chips aren't broken, they aren't faulty. N3B is just not cost effective, for Apple. That's it. Too many layers and low yields.
Given that N3B is not just in the M3 (which is in Apple's best selling Mac, the MBA) but also the A17Pro which is in one of the best selling phones on the planet I think this narrative is kind of silly ... if N3B was so bad that it was not cost effective they wouldn't have dared put it in a product that would sell in the quantities the MacBook Air and iPhone do.
OK, maybe "costs more, and eats into Timmy's margins too much" is more accurate. The point being it's not a technical fault, more an economic one.
yup, my bet is it is m3 on the block due to the above.
You have confirmation of this? Because everyone else seems pretty convinced that they are ... at least as convinced as one can be this far out and without the products in hand ...
whos everyone else? leakers?
Leakers ... and the tech press reporting on Gelsinger's comments ... albeit machine translated from a Chinese News Source:
wccftech.com
Nothing has been lost in translation. The CEO of Intel gave a scoop about TSMC to a journalist from the one of the largest and most respected newspapers in Taiwan (not China), in English, at a conference in San Jose, California.Leakers ... and the tech press reporting on Gelsinger's comments ... albeit machine translated from a Chinese News Source:
Intel CEO Confirms TSMC's Process Nodes To Power Next-Gen CPUs: N3 For Arrow Lake & N3B For Lunar Lake
Intel CEO confirms the use of TSMC N3 process node for next-gen Arrow Lake & N3B node for its Lunar Lake CPUs launching later this year.
Possibly things got misconstrued or lost in translation, but combined with leaks from last year, which were pretty substantive, that's the best evidence we have for what node Intel plans to use. Could be wrong of course, but ... unless you have a better line evidence, that seems the most likely no?
Cheers. Without speaking the language, I didn't want to presume the auto-translation of the original story was exactly accurate especially because of the usage of both N3 and N3B.
Yup, very much so.
Thing is though, why would apple build M3s to replace the M2 when the M4 is cheaper to make and better?
Because for the last two generations, Apple has sold the previous generation of MB Airs alongside the new one - e.g. Apple still sells the base M2 Air despite the M3 Air existing and previously Apple still sold M1 Air despite the M2 Air existing. When the M4 Air appears are you suggesting that they'll continue to sell the M2 Air instead of the M3 Air or that they will discontinue the practice of selling the last generation model Air? Possible I suppose, but seems very unlikely and built upon a cascading assumptions that may have started out reasonable but whose end result may be quite exaggerated.
And to reinforce my point about the graphics watershed introduced with M3, consider this sentence from the news release introducing the M4: "The new 10-core GPU of M4 builds upon the next-generation graphics architecture of the M3 family of chips."
Are you sure? I thought it was NOS, the remnants from the previous M1 MBA production. And that was why only limited configuration. And was the reason no M1 BTO configuration were available.
It's not good that Intel also is depending on Taiwan based company. The US presidential elections in November, and anything can happen. The Chinese "reunification" is still on the table. Why no company in part of the world outside China (or Taiwan) can make that kind of chip?
