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Samsung Chosen to Supply 80 Percent of Apple's Future A-Series Chips for iOS Devices
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That's all fine and dandy except it doesn't match up with the reality. Just last month TSMC posted a great financial result based on the 28nm and 20nm market, which combined accounted for 43% of their wafer revenues.
Unlike you, I have a source, TSMC themselves, a real financial result posted on their site. In the future TSMC may struggle due to increased competition but for now they have had a great year and they were, and are, the number one fab by a huge margin.
I'm not really sure why people are trying so hard to find cases of TSMC failing somewhere else in the history, or in case of mi7chy, in an unrelated industry and company to make a point Samsung is the only one who's capable of making these chips. Because right now Apple is using TSMC chips for the latest iPhone and iPads.
I hear the iPad Air 2 is having a lot of troubles with its lack of processing power and the iPhones are failing left and right due to their non-Samsung TSMC chips. Or maybe the reality is the opposite and even Samsung is using TSMC chips instead of their own for the majority of their Galaxy S and Note phones.
Also anyone remembers how the A8 was supposed to be jointly produced by Samsung? I haven't heard any report of a Samsung A8 chip materializing. Maybe something for Apple TV wonder?
Exactly. The fab sync and the GF deal have been mentioned a few times already and it seems no one is paying attention and doesn't get much publicity over hit pieces like this one when even the senator is quoted about it. At the end it just becomes another fodder silly "Samsung is evil" vs. "Apple fanboys underestimate Samsung" war (where I particularly enjoy all the ignorance of the latter camp.)
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In your opinion, do you think mfg. will slowly shift back to the states, much like Mac production could?
Anyone familiar with the semiconductor industry knows TSMC is the Walmart of fabs. They're cheap and have the quantity but not necessarily the quality compared to Intel and Samsung. Apple went with TSMC mainly because it's cheap to increase profit like the cheap TLC NAND, old LCD tech, bendable aluminum instead of nanocarbon/kevlar/composite. More interesting is Samsung's partnership with Glofo to manufacture Qualcomm Snapdragon, Exynos on 14nm and benefit to AMD APU/CPU/GPU. Apple is more of a side show with low 10% world marketshare.
![800px-MobileOS_market_share_till_2014_Q2.png]()
Yes. Manufacturing in the IT industry is beginning to mirror the Auto Industry where companies are regionally manufacturing to serve zones, instead of the entire globe from the far east.
TSMC, Samsung and Global Foundries are all beefing up manufacturing domestically.
So is Intel.
They are also beefing it up in Europe and Asia.
The next decade will be the decade of MEMS [Micro Electric Mechanical Systems].
Apple is leveraging this partnership:
http://globalfoundries.com/newsroom...ering-of-14nm-finfet-semiconductor-technology
Malta, NY Fab 8 will be stamping out 300mm Wafers, 60k/month, solely for 28nm and below [presently 14nm LPP/LPE jointly with Samsung].
Take A8X die size of 128mm^2 @20nm processing. Assuming the 14nm for A9 increases transistor count but keeps roughly the same die size:
You'll get around 530 chips per 300mm wafer. At 60,000 wafers per month [full capacity] = 31.8 million.
Obviously, Global Foundries and Samsung each have a wide variety of customers using those wafers. But you can imagine the capacity available on such large wafers and small die sizes.
They were working with 450mm wafers for the next advancement in Fabs, at 10nm and 7nm solutions.
We're going to reach a point where 3D layering will come into chip design like HBM stack memory.
Don't be so arrogant.
Okay, if you didn't grasp the context, I'll be more specific with the statement I previously wrote on my post. TSMC might be market leader in fab business still, especially in volume but it's not because they have the most advanced technology. Their glorious days regarding "fabbing technology" were with bigger-than-30/40nm market because they had big manufacturing capacity.
I don't care TSMC is raking money from mid-tier class products like 30+ nm and even with 20nm class ones. I never stated that TSMC is in trouble financially. They are falling behind their rivals like Samsung and Intel(even though Intel don't do fab business much) in technology. In that sense, I wrote that their glorious days are over.
Samsung used to make 20nm class products but never expanded the lines for them. On the contrary, to shift to 14nm FinFET quickly, they drastically decreased 20nm process lines at some point and now they are focusing on converting their key fab lines for 14nm FinFET products.
You never know what's going on in the talk between big companies. I won't get surprised at the news Samsung already finalized the deal with Qualcomm for their next-gen Snapdragon based on 14nm FinFET. Who knows? What do you think Samsung shared 14nm FinFET tech with GlobalFoundries for? To utilize their production lines, obviously. Then, who will be the clients then? Apple probably and it's logical to infer there are more. FYI: Samsung to produce 14nm FinFET chips for AMD, Apple, Qualcomm report There are already speculations.
They all need lower-power-higher-performance SoCs for their next products in their pipelines. And Samsung can make those while TSMC who used to make 20nm class products can't. Why hesitate to switch to Samsung then?
And about A8 chip production sharing with Samsung, how do you think we figure out who manufactured the chip? Apple never announce or confirm. Usually hardware-focused group like Chipworks or sometimes more professional media like Anandtech and Ars technica disassemble the chip itself physically and figures out indirectly without any official confirmation from Apple or fab companies. You never know whether TSMC manufactures all the A8 chips or not, not to speak of the proportion between TSMC and Samsung in case Samsung manufactured some portion of them unless the disassembler aforementioned disassemble considerable amount of devices from various regions.
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Wow, isnt Samsung a competitor to Apple, now they are friends, kind of shocked. Maybe i should regard it as a good thing.
nexus 9 hülle klar
nexus 9 hülle klar
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You just described Microsoft, not Apple!
Some steel company the built the Eiffel Tower - they just gave credit to that guy for publicity!?
Samsung is not bigger than Intel - that is why Apple has the clout with them for producing the "brick and mortar!"
If they are that big, considering the animosity between them, why don't they show Apple the door already! They have been wanting to be Apple for a while - they can deliver the kill shot anytime if they are that good!
You cannot be a competitor with one division and a customer of another? There is no friends in this, companies cannot be friends, they're not people they're paperwork. Apple needs something Samsung can provide a the price Apple is willing to pay, it's a simple as that.
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I'm starting to think companies are no longer really "enemies" anymore. They all just operate in a careful balance of competitive spirit and a sort of necessary cooperation in some ways.
They all use a lot of the same technology, parts from many of the same vendors (Qualcomm for radio chipsets for instance). Samsung is probably more than happy to be able to make a few dollars from some iPhones sold, and Apple is happy to have multiple suppliers for their parts so that if one company decides to "take all their toys and go home" they don't lose out.
It all works in the end, everyone makes money and we all get decent products, most of the time.
Great post. It's almost like how the US political system works: we people think there's a real difference between democrat and republicans but ultimately it's just whos taking your money and spending it on stuff you probably don't approve of. They are all in bed together per se.
Apple is a systems integration and design company
; they sell a good experience to the client, not a product. Just wrote their mission statement ;-).They are a software company because that's the framework for system integration.
They design the parts and get them made to order and then use their software framework to make it all work together.
Design is to make the parts work well together.
Huh? Samsung is *much* larger than Intel.
Um, because Samsung is in business to make money just like Apple is? You guys are silly, and you really have a myopic view of the world and how a business is run.
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Microsoft has as much claim to being a hardware manufacturer as Apple does. Which is to say, not much. They spec the hardware, Foxconn/etc actually engineer and produce it. Apple has incredible marketing skill, and respectable software engineering (though I have to say, there are plenty of bugs in iOS 8 that make me think they've diverted too much money from software to marketing...).
Samsung's smartphone business is hurting because competition from other Android handsets has gotten fierce. Here's a hint: The best build quality smartphone you can buy now is definitely not an iPhone. And the best industrial design isn't the iPhone, either. I'm using an iPhone 6 right now because of the software and ecosystem, in spite of the hardware. Apple obsesses about thin and aluminum, and the result is you have a bendable phone that slips out of your hand unless you put a case on it. What's the point of making something pretty when all of your customers have to disguise it in a case just to make it usable?
Yes I agree Samsungs smart phone business is hurting from the Chinese OEMs but it's their own fault and they trusted Google with android. Why was this a big mistake well for one they have to compete against Google and everyone else. Google is laughing all the way to the bank and they put all these manufacture is in a pit and let them fight it out. this tactic will eventually backfire on Google.
Everyone's beef about Apple making their phones thinner and thinner is a mute point. Thinner devices push innovation limits. If it were not for Apple pushing manufactories to make small the chips and small components you would not have one smart watch today. For the issue of bending phones I have not been my 6+ yet neither has my wife iPhone, if the iPhone bends that easy everyone would have a bent iPhone. It's a fact that I'm using my iPhone 6+ exactly the way I was using my iPhone 5s.
In the world of chip making, Intel is LARGER than Samsung. Samsung makes chips as designed by others (order A7 - A9), like a brick maker, i.e., they have the foundries! Intel innovates and designs its chips, like AMD does. Both are better and bigger at it than Samsung! I will not add the heavy industrial machinery to automobile divisions of Samsung to pad it up, when we are discussing smartphones - or the whole computing segment, including flash drives. And, Samsung is government owned!
Apple is a Hardware and Software maker who integrates the products in a smooth environ, and stands by both - no passing the buck like Microsoft and the PC makers are famous for for decades!Microsoft "hardware" in PCs!? Where?
All of these companies have excellent marketing skills - see how we are squabbling over them! And, carrying around powerful phones that have features we do not need to varying degrees!
20 % is still an huge number ...
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Last time I checked, the iPhone wasn't a Samsung product. And in the same way the iPhone 6S won't be a Samsung product.
I won't buy a Samsung product. I will buy an Apple product.
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Do you have any idea how rich Apple is? Samsung need Apple more than Apple needs Samsung.
Apple could make iDevices without Samsung, but Samsung can't have a bigger customer than Apple in this field.
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Apple doesn't need Samsung. They choose Samsung for convenience.
That's quite different...
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Very well educated post.
They are speaking about Samsung haters, but all I can see here are mostly Samsung lovers which don't understand the stronger position here is held by Apple.
This in a parallel dimension.
In the real world Samsung is offering Apple to make their CPU because they need Apple's money.
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They aren't friends.
They are business partners.
Quite different.
Nice attempt trying to try save face with a vague term.
Mobile is handsets. What are you talking about?
You talking about handsets as in cordless phone handsets? No one even uses that term.
Vague term save face. Typical.
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In the world of chip making, Intel is LARGER than Samsung. Samsung makes chips as designed by others (order A7 - A9), like a brick maker, i.e., they have the foundries! Intel innovates and designs its chips, like AMD does. Both are better and bigger at it than Samsung! I will not add the heavy industrial machinery to automobile divisions of Samsung to pad it up, when we are discussing smartphones - or the whole computing segment, including flash drives. And, Samsung is government owned!
Microsoft "hardware" in PCs!? Where?
All of these companies have excellent marketing skills - see how we are squabbling over them! And, carrying around powerful phones that have features we do not need to varying degrees!
Samsung is govrnment owned? Wow. Didnt know that.
Always a good laugh.
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They choose them for convenience? What a joke.
In the world of chip making, Intel is LARGER than Samsung. Samsung makes chips as designed by others (order A7 - A9), like a brick maker, i.e., they have the foundries! Intel innovates and designs its chips, like AMD does. Both are better and bigger at it than Samsung! I will not add the heavy industrial machinery to automobile divisions of Samsung to pad it up, when we are discussing smartphones - or the whole computing segment, including flash drives. And, Samsung is government owned!
Microsoft "hardware" in PCs!? Where?
All of these companies have excellent marketing skills - see how we are squabbling over them! And, carrying around powerful phones that have features we do not need to varying degrees!
Um..the XBOX series of consoles?
Isn't it funny how we are fighting each other about semantics. That speaks volumes to the state of large corporations nowadays. They are really a melting pot of identities--- and you're all correct!