the backstory here is that TSMC N3 is a trainwreck, it's now separated into two different nodes, N3B (for bad) and N3E (enhanced). N3E gets the promised step that was originally for N3, but it only enters volume production next year. Supposedly it will actually bring costs down (and yields up) because this is where some additional steps go EUV. Both TSMC and Samsung have been fucking around with their marketing around nodes to try and say they're first in volume 4nm production, but both are having problems with the final bosses of FINFET at 3nm and after this both TSMC and Samsung do GAAFET and solve a different set of problems. Past that lies... nothing. Hyper-NA seems dead.

In the meantime, M3 is on N3B despite very low yields, which surely applied design pressure to keep size down, and the power gains are not as good, and also the density is worse than promised. Apple also surely feels pressure to keep prices high (bait-tier M3 base option with 8GB lol) and honestly they probably are going to be tough to justify on a performance/efficiency basis compared to very fierce ARMv8 competition (we are now testing the thesis there's no difference lol). Apple still has advantages but man do they take you to the cleaners for the result, a loaded apple laptop is obscene. I chose to go for an older loaded M1 Max instead of waiting for M3, because I could actually get a nice laptop that wouldn't impose limits on a prosumer etc. 1TB is all anyone can afford still and that's really silly.

(SSD prices in particular are absolutely inexcusable lol. Mandate a M.2 NVMe 3.0/4.0/+ port please, EU, it's time. Don't care how it works, slot it into the side or whatever if you want, it can be single-sided 2230 or 2242 if you want, but it's time.)

I also wonder if losing a bunch of the PA Semi team to whatever startup (it may have been nuvia or tenstorrent lol) may also have hurt apple's velocity on A16/A17. There were a lot of apple silicons before M1, after all. But certainly TSMC is a bunch of the problem here.

I think they'll hustle to refresh it and do M3+ as a fast follow in 6-12 months with N3E, the cost economics are very favorable to jump as soon as there's the volume. That doesn't mean MBP gets refreshed immediately though, they'll ramp on the phones (iphone 16/16 pro, etc) and base-tier M3+ or whatever first.

>the backstory here is that TSMC N3 is a trainwreck, it's now separated into two different nodes, N3B (for bad) and N3E (enhanced).

Without N3B, there will never be N3E.

It was the same with N7. And none of these are new to a new node generation.