this post was submitted on 10 Sep 2024
65 points (89.2% liked)
Apple
17445 readers
142 users here now
Welcome
to the largest Apple community on Lemmy. This is the place where we talk about everything Apple, from iOS to the exciting upcoming Apple Vision Pro. Feel free to join the discussion!
Rules:
- No NSFW Content
- No Hate Speech or Personal Attacks
- No Ads / Spamming
Self promotion is only allowed in the pinned monthly thread
Communities of Interest:
Apple Hardware
Apple TV
Apple Watch
iPad
iPhone
Mac
Vintage Apple
Apple Software
iOS
iPadOS
macOS
tvOS
watchOS
Shortcuts
Xcode
Community banner courtesy of u/Antsomnia.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I really don't understand this trend outside of profit squeezing and pushing users to cloud storage subscriptions. Right now on Amazon $120 bags you 2 TB of 6 GB/sec consumer flash storage. Don't tell me they can't find another 128 GB, especially with economy of scale.
The year is 2024 and storage is cheap. No excuses.
You begin your comment saying you don't understand. And then you state the exact reasons why. You do know. You just hope your wrong. You aren't. Google (and Apple) have become worse then Microsoft.
Tim Apple needs to make sure his services department keeps growing its subscribers. Making the shareholders happy and secure his personal bonus payments.
Packaging flash storage onto the actual ~~SoC~~ SiP costs more than manufacturing the same amount of storage into an M.2 or external USB form factor, so that price can't be directly compared. They're making a big chunk of profit on storage upgrades, and on cloud subscriptions, but it's not exactly cheap to give everyone 1TB of storage at that base price.
That’s fascinating. My understanding was that flash storage is not physically integrated into the SoC but rather remains a separate ship that is sometimes stacked vertically.
You're right, it's not the same die, but the advanced packaging techniques that they keep improving (like the vertical stacking you mention) make for a much tighter set of specs for the raw flash storage silicon compared to what they might be putting in USB drives or NVMe sticks, in power consumption/temperature management, bus speeds/latency, form factor, etc.
So it'd be more accurate to describe it as a system on a package (SiP) rather than a system on a chip (SoC). Either way, that carries certain requirements that aren't present for a standalone storage package separately soldered onto the PCB, or even storage through some kind of non-soldered swappable interface.
Thanks! It’s nice to learn something new.
Yeah, this advanced packaging stuff is pretty new, where they figured out how to make little chiplets but still put them onto the same package, connected by new tech that finally allows for high speed, low latency connections between chiplets (without causing dealbreaker temperature issues). That's opened up a lot of progress even as improving the circuits on the silicon itself has run into engineering challenges.
So while TSMC seemingly ahead of its competition on actually printing circuits on silicon with smaller and denser features, advanced packaging tech is going a long way in allowing companies to mix and match different pieces of silicon with different strengths and functionality (for a more cost effective end solution, and making better use of the nodes that aren't at the absolute bleeding edge).
Engineers are doing all sorts of cool stuff right now.
It's 100% to push people to cloud services.