This is the best summary I could come up with:

It’s been rumored for several months now that Apple will be using a new 3 nm manufacturing process from Taiwan Semiconductor (TSMC) for its next-generation chips, including M3 series processors for Macs and the A17 Bionic for some next-gen iPhones.

But new reporting from The Information illuminates some of the favorable terms that Apple has secured to keep its costs down: Apple places huge chip orders worth billions of dollars, and in return, TSMC eats the cost of defective processor dies.

The Information says that roughly 70 percent of early 3 nm dies have been usable, though this number can change based on the chip being manufactured and does generally go up over time as processes are improved.

Reports have been circulating for months that Apple has bought up all of TSMC’s 3 nm manufacturing capacity in the short term, and The Information reports that TSMC’s 3 nm technology will be exclusive to Apple for “roughly a year” before there will be capacity to allow any other companies to use it.

TSMC currently makes most of the high-performance CPUs, GPUs, and SoCs for most of the world’s biggest chip companies; Apple, Nvidia, AMD, and Qualcomm all use TSMC for their most advanced products, and many have switched from competitors like Samsung and GlobalFoundries in the past few years.

Even Intel, which for most of its history has only made Intel-designed chips in its own factories, is relying on TSMC’s manufacturing for its Arc GPUs and some parts of its upcoming Meteor Lake processors, even as it tries to open its own factories to compete with TSMC for business from other chip designers.

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