Given Tim Cook's roots I'm surprised that he is at all comfortable with a sole source for this critical component. If no other company can make the A12, what will Apple do if something happens to TSMC (earthquake, war with PRC, etc.).
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Apple Supplier TSMC Begins Production on Processors Destined for 2018 iPhones
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Nope. That's a mixed signal (analog/RF/digital and MEMS) foundry used for an entirely different class of chips (and about as far away from what TSMC does as you can get). Based on the geometry stated, the tech is around 15 years old.
It isn't even remotely suitable pre-production of Apple's Ax devices, as claimed above.
...holy ****. First off, Apple did a massive renovation when they bought the place, so the reporting on what was made there before doesn’t have any bearing on what their doing there.
Second, you insisted they don’t own a fab, they clearly do. So you went from insisting that they don’t own any such thing, to now knowing what they’re actually doing with the place.
On the very basic premise this started on, does Apple own a chip foundry (regardless of what its used for or what it’s tooled for)? Yes? Yes.
No, again. The premise of the comment, and the context of this thread, was Apple doing pre-production of Ax chips in-house before having TSMC manufacturing them - thus my comment.
"...holy ****. First off, Apple did a massive renovation when they bought the place, so the reporting on what was made there before doesn’t have any bearing on what their doing there."
A massive renovation for what? I suspect you have very little knowledge of silicon foundries and processes, and what would be required for Apple to manufacture test/pre-production Ax chips for TSMC.
Yet I knew Apple has a foundry, so please don’t tell me that you suddenly know what Apple is doing in San Jose.
Have you ever designed high-performance chips and engaged a foundry for manufacturing? Any idea idea of what a foundry is, its requirements, cost, process development, etc?
Go on, tell me what’s required to make runs of a few hundred (at most) chips for R&D. If a university can do such things in-house for defense industry research projects without a million square foot foundry why can’t Apple?
I don’t know if you’re purposely looking past the R&D aspect of this place, but it should not be compared to TSMC because it’s not for commercial production. Apple has a ****ing chip lab, period. As for what’s going on behind the scenes we can speculate but neither you or I have any clue what equipment Apple brought in. I remember a few years back word of them buying a few
EUV lithography machines for in house R&D. They’ve pumped BILLIONS into their chip team and labs, I don’t think it’s a stretch to believe they are doing far more intially in-house than common convention would suggest.
Remember, this is a company that ordered 20,000 CNC machines just to make a laptop unibody. The lengths this company goes to push forward aspects of manufacturing simply can’t be overlooked.
For sure on that. There's a lot on the line and a lot of risk.
My guess Apple has a Plan B, involving Samsung. Which might incur some delay and possibly some slight hits (performance/power dissipation/yield/cost etc.).
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And TSMC isn't designing them so I don't see your point. Both Apple and TSMC are essential.
It appears your answer to my question up above, is no. If it were yes you'd understand why your questions in this post, while certainly well-intentioned, do not make sense, even for Apple.
BTW... a "chip lab" is not a foundry (I used to work for a small start-up fabless high-performance full-custom chip company in Palo Alto, California, using contract foundries for production, before it was acquired by a large company).
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Sounds like you are mixing up assembling and manufacturing in your comparison.
As others pointed out Apple is very dependent on TSMC’s know-how in node making as it seems to be the only manufacturer currently able to produce 7nm chips (at least in the required volumes). TSMC invested heavily in their R&D to be able to do so (close to $3bn in 2017) and Apple’s designs take advantage of that technology. Both companies contribute their own intellectual property in the process, I wouldn’t discredit any of them.
It’s a pitty so many people are disregarding the fact that the technology it takes to make technology might sometimes be even more elaborated than the product itself.
No. It's Apple's design. TSMC is only the foundry where it is being manufactured. Any foundry with sufficient technology could be contracted to build a design that Apple hands them. When we see a building designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, do we give full credit to the contractor who did the actual building, seeing as Mr. Wright didn't actually do any of that himself?
It's hard to say because they increase the horse power each time they make it more efficient and they can change the battery size as well. We will need real world benchmarks to know what the battery life is.
Please, tell me why Apple can’t possibly be doing such a thing in this location? You hinted as having a reason why, but never elaborated. Seeing as you have direct experience in the field can you please elaborate what the constraints would be?
What the building was used for previously has no bearing here unless certain utility hookups aren’t enough here.
Hi there, I agree with you. It should absolutely matter, but in truth Apple does this great work on their processor designs but never it really manifests itself in any real world benefit....other the next generation iPad seems as quick and fluid as the last generation when it was released ....and perhaps some talking poo! The point is the A12 will be double digits times faster than the processor in the first iPad on paper....just it never seems so in the real world, unlike GPU’s which incorporate new feature sets but with every generation show real tangible and real world performance jumps
"Any foundry with sufficient technology" so not Apple
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No if TSMC can't make the chips Apple are screwed
QA testing, and production has to ramp up. If they just started they’re likely testing the limits of how much they can manufacture and what the yields are... if it’s not good they could slightly tweak the design before a ramp up.
What's really cool is TMSC and GF 7nm surpasses Intel 14nm++ and Is actually slightly better than Intel's 10nm node which has been delayed for an additional 18 months!
SOURCE: https://www.semiwiki.com/forum/content/7191-iedm-2017-intel-versus-globalfoundries-leading-edge.html
Going forward, Apple, AMD, and Nvidia are going to have the process node advantage over Intel. This means two things:
1. Apple might start looking at AMD chips very seriously now, since Thunderbolt Support exists on Ryzen now, and AMD is pulling ahead
2. Apple might opt for a semi custom solution from AMD, since AMD does semi custom work.
3. Apple might skip AMD chips in favor of their own CPU's for mac desktops and laptops.
Since Apple owns the entire software and hardware stack on their phones and iPads they should really just go all in and buy TSMC and then start also using them to replace Intel in their laptops and desktops.
How about Nvidia graphics?What's really cool is TMSC and GF 7nm surpasses Intel 14nm++ and Is actually slightly better than Intel's 10nm node which has been delayed for an additional 18 months!
SOURCE: https://www.semiwiki.com/forum/content/7191-iedm-2017-intel-versus-globalfoundries-leading-edge.html
Going forward, Apple, AMD, and Nvidia are going to have the process node advantage over Intel. This means two things:
1. Apple might start looking at AMD chips very seriously now, since Thunderbolt Support exists on Ryzen now, and AMD is pulling ahead
2. Apple might opt for a semi custom solution from AMD, since AMD does semi custom work.
3. Apple might skip AMD chips in favor of their own CPU's for mac desktops and laptops.
WoW! This is quite interesting , Intel is still unable to do 7nm process for i9, this makes A12 the first 7nm processor. I bet its gonna be a Desktop class processor used in Macbook Air , Mini etc ..
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Well they are much far ahead than the industry, since Intel's 10nm is delayed for 18 months, i dont see anyone other than TSMC/Apple producing a chip lesser than 10nm before Intel. The best Guess is that you will not see a chip around 7nm before much after 30 months. 3 yrs in Semiconductor time is hard to catch up. Look at AMD they are still not able to catch i7 or i9 single core speed with their Ryzen and Zen CPU architectures. Even though they spent 4 yrs designing it.
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And without Apple buying millions of chips TSMC wouldn't have the money to invest in more advanced technology.
I think people are underestimating what Apple is doing for the smartphone industry in terms of investments. Even if they don't own all the IP they make big money and that's what allows their partners to improve components like chips, displays, storage etc.
Samsung is another big player, but without Apple and their pricey iPhones Samsung would sell less expensive products and have no interest, and less money, to invest in R&D for their gorgeous displays.
Oh I don't know about the chips on the iPhones, but there's really big difference in the X versions put into iPads. You can seriously feel it when you use an iPad Pro, especially the improved graphics portion.
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You can feel it on the iPhone as well if you use apps needing horsepower.
Some of mine enterprise apps have to deal with a lot of data processing and while the UI is always snappy, even on old iPads (I always test my stuff on a 5 years old iPad 3) when it comes to processing data there is a huge difference between iPad 3, the Air 2 and an iPad pro. I'm not only talking about graphics, even processing large JSON files is really different and that's pure CPU computation.
If you only use messages (iMessage, Whatsapp, Mail), make calls and take pictures an iPhone 6s doesn't feel slow at all, and the same applies to an iPad Air. When you start using certain apps you immediately notice the difference.
And we're just at the beginning of use of machine learning in apps, that's something that requires a lot computation and will benefit a lot from new SoC.
A12 could really be one of the flagship features of next iPhone, we had a new design in 2018 so the big improvement is going to be AR and ML stuff, all requiring a new CPU.
