Apple went with a 148 mm² monolithic SoC on N5P for the M2. Maybe Intel was reluctant to do a monolithic design on TSMC N3
Just for context, around 2019, the assumption for pretty much everyone was that N3 would be ready for volume production around mid-2022, and would show up in the A16. But Intel wasn't the only one who slipped timelines, and also, N3's kinda been a mess even ignoring the delay. uzzi38 has commented on that before as well, but talk to literally anyone who's so much as evaluated it. Been a right pain.
But is N6 any cheaper or demonstrably better than Intel 7 for the SoC and IOE tiles?
So here's my understanding of things. Keller really didn't like being tied to Intel foundry for several reasons, one of which was the lack of availability of ecosystem IP. I.e. if Intel wanted any hard IP on the process (e.g. PCIe PHYs), they had to do it themselves. So a trial of sorts was arranged. The desktop Alder Lake PCH would be manufactured on
Samsung 14nm, not Intel, as a way for Intel's design teams to dip their toes into external manufacturing. Yes, the desktop Alder Lake chipset is manufactured by Samsung. Well it turns out that the chipset team
loved it. They were super impressed with the ease of use and quality + availability of IP.
So looking at Meteor Lake, they knew that not only could it be done, but they were very confident in their ability to reduce their overall workload (by buying IP if needed), as well as avoiding some of the process churn and issues they encountered with Intel's fabs. IIRC, the entire MTL SoC die ends up funneled through the chipset team at some point, though I'm hazy on the details. And that aside, I'm
pretty sure N6 is also significantly better from a technical standpoint, looking at low-mid voltage performance and especially leakage vs Intel 7. Might even be cheaper, but the economics of that are hard to know for obvious reasons. Seriously, N6 is the hammer for every nail.