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A9 Chip Manufacturing Split 60/40 Between TSMC and Samsung, Not Segmented by Device Size
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That ballast is called the identical size packages the silicon chips are sealed inside. More silicon area, less ceramic or plastic volume.
oooh, bad form Apple. I could accept having the 6s use different chips then the 6s Plus, but to "randomly" distribute the A9 from two manufactures is just going to lead to a headache if one of those suppliers ships a bad lot...TSMC.
I don't lament Apple choosing two partners to produce their components as obviously Apple needs to ensure they can have a robust supply chain, but to shuffle and randomize the components in the same product model is just not a good idea, especially if the Samsung chip seems to be a different production design then the TSMC one.
Are we going to find benchmark, battery life or stability issues depending on what part is in your iPhone now? Are people going to start producing websites of lot numbers on what to look for when shopping for an iPhone? Are people going to avoid an iPhone because it has a Samsung part in it or vice versa? All this is just going to lead to consumer angst in the long run. It might be all moot, but consumers are fickle these days.
I don't lament Apple choosing two partners to produce their components as obviously Apple needs to ensure they can have a robust supply chain, but to shuffle and randomize the components in the same product model is just not a good idea, especially if the Samsung chip seems to be a different production design then the TSMC one.
Are we going to find benchmark, battery life or stability issues depending on what part is in your iPhone now? Are people going to start producing websites of lot numbers on what to look for when shopping for an iPhone? Are people going to avoid an iPhone because it has a Samsung part in it or vice versa? All this is just going to lead to consumer angst in the long run. It might be all moot, but consumers are fickle these days.
And the alternative? We would all be waiting 3+ months for our shiny new iPhones due to delays and supply constraints because Apple only used 1 manufacturer. And people would be kicking and screaming in that scenario as well.
This. This is standard high volume manufacturing, and Apple's volumes are as high as anyone's.
B
I have the iPhone 6s Plus rose gold 128gb and this is the first iPhone that I've had that has not overheated at and the battery lasted me all day from yesterday and till today with still 43 percent left. I largely think it's due to the Samsung cpu in my phone that I just checked with the app.
No, clearly it's because of the rose gold color.
(If we were to apply about the same level of logic.)
Granted, the A9 SoC seems to be a great one and is probably responsible for great performance, but it isn't because yours happens to be fabricated by Samsung and not TSMC.
Can't you understand that graph ? It's just a spike, not thermal throttling...Well A9 (TSMC one?) starts to throttle from 1,84 Ghz to 0,4 Ghz after 30 seconds of load.
The throttling in that graph you can see in the red line (iPhone 5S) after 60 seconds, when the clock lower to about 1.2 Ghz steadily...
The iPhone 6S remains above 1.8 Ghz almost all the time, and it's quite impressive.
The worst behavior in that graph is shown by iPhone 5S
And you clearly can't understand that graph...
A9 behavior is impressive.
Samsung 8 core could only dream of something like that, but you haters can't even understand a basic graph like this ...
This.
It's very sad to see how people without basic understanding of the matter keep posting fud here, to fuel hysteria ...
Actually not...
But with you is futile...
Well done.
Actually is most probably a TSMC chip, since they are the 60% of production.
But BJonson here want us to believe that only Samsung is capable to make an efficient chip.
So Ars, one of the 3-4 best websites of the world, has less knowledge than the enlighten BJonson on the matter ?
Lol ...
"Made in reaction to the closed source tool advertised by Macrumors, which is signed with a leaked enterprise cert, collects UDIDs, and has Ads."
Was this confirmed?
This is a good thing. It's called the "race to sleep". The faster a CPU finishes the thread tasks at hand, the sooner it can shift down to a super low power mode, thus conserving even more battery life.
As for throttling due to heating, the heat from the WiFi and cellular radio chips and distance to the cell tower currently nearest you will make a bigger difference in the time it takes to heat up your phone enough for you to feel it.
Higher. I heard one semiconductor analyst predict that this year Apple will ship more total A-series processor chips in iOS devices than Intel will ship in total x86 chips for PCs, laptops and servers combined. Javascript on an iPhone 6s runs faster than Javascript on my Xeon server. Apple is now the big kahuna among CPU chip design companies.
The funniest part of all this is 99% (edit- maybe not that high, but most people) of the people on here have no idea what TSMC is, as others have said. And for some reason blindly trust Samsung. To say TSMC has far more experience and expertise than Samsung in this industry is a gross understatement. nVidia, AMD, Qualcomm, Marvell, among others, all outsource fab to TSMC. Not small companies. And did we forget TSMC also manufactured the A8 and mighty A8X which is common in all our iDevices? Latest rumors are that TSMC will be the sole manufacturer of the A10 10nm chip. Will you all pass up the iPhone 7 if TSMC becomes the sole partner? I hope so, no waiting in line for me then.
True. TSMC is in the business since 1987 and it's the biggest independent foundry. They are working in partnership with Apple since the A5
I think that many posters simply can't comprehend the scales involved at this point.
Some lemons will make it through QC/QA into the hands of users. It's inevitable, but it's more likely assembly related than anything else. (EDIT: And that's just from decades of my own personal experience).
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Was hoping for Samsung. Not sure why other than I trust their brand more (have a Samsung external hard drive and TV).
Got TSMC. Oh, well. Phone still runs like a champ
That is because of the success of Samsung marketing.
TSMC don't do that. TSMC has 70% total market share in terms of contract manufacture chip. That means every electronic device that you have ever owned in your entire life - 70% of all those chips is made by TSMC. (Other than memory)In fact, with/without the A9 processor, all of other chips in your iPhone (other than memory) is manufactured by TSMC.
Story evolves...
"The gap between the two companies implies that Apple’s A9 is built on TSMC’s first-generation 16nm technology; the second generation (16FF+) was designed to close power and performance gaps between TSMC and its Korean competitor."
http://www.extremetech.com/computing/215217-samsung-tsmc-both-fab-apples-a9-processor-report
"The gap between the two companies implies that Apple’s A9 is built on TSMC’s first-generation 16nm technology; the second generation (16FF+) was designed to close power and performance gaps between TSMC and its Korean competitor."
http://www.extremetech.com/computing/215217-samsung-tsmc-both-fab-apples-a9-processor-report
I wonder if second generation TSMC 16nmFF+ will find it's way to iPad Pro's A9X... Wider availabilty expected in Q4 2015 or Q1 2016.
There is also rumors that 16nmFF+ is better suited to higher power devices than 16nmFF.
So if iPad Pro uses TSMC 16nmFF+ you heard it here first(?), if not then I was wrong.
There is also rumors that 16nmFF+ is better suited to higher power devices than 16nmFF.
So if iPad Pro uses TSMC 16nmFF+ you heard it here first(?), if not then I was wrong.
TSMC decided not to use 14nm feature size and went to 16nm for whatever reason. But FYI, TSMC 16nm process had been development since 2011-2012. Currently batch of A9 chip uses the 16FF+ technology, which is the 2nd generation of the TSMC 16nm process. (Samsung's 14nm is also on their second generation).
The key feature of the 16nm/14nm process is the FinFet transistors, which has superior leakage power reduction => gives a much higher standby power saving. FinFet transistor technology had been in development since 1999, TSMC first demonstrated FinFet transistor in 2002 when UC Berkeley Professor Chi-Ming Hu, the inventor of Finfet was the CTO at TSMC.
I wonder if second generation TSMC 16nmFF+ will find it's way to iPad Pro's A9X... Wider availabilty expected in Q4 2015 or Q1 2016.
There is also rumors that 16nmFF+ is better suited to higher power devices than 16nmFF.
So if iPad Pro uses TSMC 16nmFF+ you heard it here first(?), if not then I was wrong.
TSMC 16nm FF+ is the 2nd generation of the 16nm process node. Current A9/A9X are all on 16nm FF+. The 3rd generation, TSMC 16FFC (16 Finfet Compact) scheduled for 2016, which supposed to give an additional 50% power saving over 16FF+. The target application might be for Apple Watch processor and other low power wearables. Though I would not be surprised if Apple A10 was built on 16FFC process IF TSMC 10nm did not come on line as scheduled in 2016.
Incidentally, the upcoming new generation of Nvidia and AMD GPUs will all be on TSMC 16FF+ for those of you gaming fans, overclockers out there.
Any sources for this? Extremetech article says TSMC A9 is first generation 16nmFF... See couple posts above.
Global foundry 14nm process couldn't hit the 50% yield requirement as the 2nd source back in April; so all their order of Apple A9 went to TSMC. This explains why TSMC's allotment of 30% became 60%. (Not counting iPad Pro A9X which is 100% TSMC, which gives TSMC 70% of all A9* chips as predicted by analysts)
The 14nm was the best chance that Samsung/Global Foundry to break TSMC's dominance in the contract manufacturing world. If they couldn't do it, they would have a hard time catching up in the near future. Unfortunately, the the report shows the yield isn't that great, leading to Apple to shift more orders to TSMC.
Apple will most likely go with TSMC as the primary source for the foreseeable future. Well ... not they already aren't since 80% of other chips on the iPhone (other than the CPU) was already made by TSMC.
The 14nm was the best chance that Samsung/Global Foundry to break TSMC's dominance in the contract manufacturing world. If they couldn't do it, they would have a hard time catching up in the near future. Unfortunately, the the report shows the yield isn't that great, leading to Apple to shift more orders to TSMC.
Apple will most likely go with TSMC as the primary source for the foreseeable future. Well ... not they already aren't since 80% of other chips on the iPhone (other than the CPU) was already made by TSMC.
Global Foundries:http://www.kitguru.net/components/a...cts-using-second-gen-14nm-process-technology/
GlobalFoundries: We started to tape-out chips using second-gen 14nm process technology
September 26th, 2015 at 2:54 am - Author Anton Shilov
GlobalFoundries on Friday confirmed that the first products to be made using the company’s advanced 14nm LPP [low-power plus] manufacturing technology had been taped out. The contract maker of chips did not reveal any details, but indicated that prototype chips had demonstrated “excellent” performance and yields. One of the customers, who will use the 14LPP is Advanced Micro Devices.
The 14LPP fabrication process developed by Samsung Foundry and licensed by GlobalFoundries shares a lot of elements with the 14nm LPE [low-power early] manufacturing technology, which has been used to produce various integrated circuits (ICs) for many months now. The 14LPP is expected to enable chip designers to create more complex system-on-chips that run at up to 10 per cent higher clock-rate and feature lower power consumption. The two process technologies share common design rules, but use different standard-cell libraries, compilers, etc.
“The performance-enhanced version of the technology (14LPP) is set for qualification in the second half of 2015, with the volume ramp beginning in early 2016,” said Jason Gorss, senior manager of corporate and technology communications at GlobalFoundries.
View attachment 587761
According to Mr. Gorss, the company started to tape-out products, which will be manufactured using the 14LPP a while ago. Tape-out is the final stage of the design cycle of an integrated circuit, the point at which the artwork of the IC is sent to a maker of photomasks. Once the set of photolithographic masks is completed and verified, it is directed to the contract manufacturer of the chip, which produces the first samples of the IC. If GlobalFoundries started a tape-out process, it means that samples of certain products are either in production or have been produced.
“Prototyping on test vehicles has demonstrated excellent logic and SRAM yields and performance at near 100% of target,” explained the official for GlobalFoundries.
GlobalFoundries remains on-track to begin high-volume manufacturing of commercial chips using 14nm LPP technology in 2016. The company is expected to produce a number of high-performance designs using the process. Just like in case of the 14LPE, customers of GlobalFoundries and Samsung Foundry will be able to use fabs of both producers in order to increase manufacturing volume of their chips.
Earlier this year Advanced Micro Devices confirmed that it had taped-out its first two products to be made using FinFET manufacturing technologies. According to unofficial information, AMD will use GlobalFoundries’ 14LPP fabrication process to produce its code-named “Summit Ridge” central processing unit with up to eight “Zen” cores, which will be marketed under “FX” and “Opteron” brands late next year. AMD is expected to use Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.’s 16nm FinFET+ (CLN16FF+) for production of its the code-named “Greenland” graphics processing unit based on the next iteration of the GCN [graphics core next] architecture.
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TSMC will eventually lose out to Samsung/Global Foundries duality at 14nm LPE/LPP.
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I wouldn't go this far .... yet. But it is true that Samsung Semiconductor did steal their semiconductor executive from TSMC and that executive was recently convicted of stealing trade secret and giving it to Samsung.
A former TSMC chief researcher, Liang Mong-song, was recently convicted of stealing trade secret from TSMC and giving it to Samsung benefiting the development of 14nm technology. He left TSMC in 2011, at the height of 16FF development, and joined Samsung to run their 14nm process development. He has been barred from working with Samsung in the short term. It is not clear if TSMC will continue to pursue this case in the international court, which may possibly bar any processor made by Samsung 14nm process from being exported to those countries which TSMC pursues a judgement.
But we don't know what the trade secret was, nor how much benefit Samsung received from getting this trade secret. We will find out in the next few month.
A former TSMC chief researcher, Liang Mong-song, was recently convicted of stealing trade secret from TSMC and giving it to Samsung benefiting the development of 14nm technology. He left TSMC in 2011, at the height of 16FF development, and joined Samsung to run their 14nm process development. He has been barred from working with Samsung in the short term. It is not clear if TSMC will continue to pursue this case in the international court, which may possibly bar any processor made by Samsung 14nm process from being exported to those countries which TSMC pursues a judgement.
But we don't know what the trade secret was, nor how much benefit Samsung received from getting this trade secret. We will find out in the next few month.