Alternative story: They aren't called Samsung.
Chips are made from inexpensive materials: sand, most of the chip's price come from the actual design of the circuit (that Apple does by themselves), and the R&D investment necessary to achieve even better technologies (lower nanometers), by using TSMC, Apple is returning that investment to TSMC, making life harder for Samsung.
This. People always say "Samsung won't notice - they have other customers to take up the production capacity if Apple moves to someone else." They're forgetting two important things:
- What other mobile device manufacturer is ordering 300+ million high-end processors per year?
- And as mentioned above, any production that moves from Samsung to TSMC means less R&D money for Samsung and more for TSMC (one of their primary competitors). It's never good to see billions of dollars in business go to a competitor.
The 6s already use a 16nm process from TSMC or 14nm from Samsung. And the 16nm from TSMC already proved to be better than the 14nm from Samsung.So this does have a number of cool advantages, but I have to wonder if it's really going to give them much of a leg up on Samsung. The Galaxy S7 uses a 14nm process CPU already, whereas this is a 16nm process. Still has other advantages, but I don't expect the improvements to be that significant.
So Apple really did read our threads about which chip is currently in your iPhone, Samsung or TSMC? Most people said the TSMC was a better performer. I knew they were watching our threads.
The fact that this doesn't have more up votes is appalling.Great article. I give it A10/10![]()
Did Samsung stop making Qualcomm's high-end SOCs?
Samsung Semi's 2Q sales are up 6% (YoY) and 8% (QoQ), so despite Apple's recent dramatic decline, the company is doing well -- a sign that the division doesn't depend on Apple sales.
Let's face it, Apple doesn't want Samsung making their chips. Apple doesn't want Samsung manufacturing anything they put in their devices.
Reminiscent of what you'd find on AT. Well done.Kudos for these more technical articles of late. Keep them coming!
Apple doesn't care who makes their processors. As long as they can follow directions and make them to Apples specifications in the quantity Apple needs. If TSMC gets 100% of Apple orders for the next A10 processor it will be because TSMC is providing a better product.
It was poorly written!I didn't understand much of the article![]()
The thermal advantages to this design may well be 20%, but that isn't equal to a full node shrink.
Since then, TSMC confirmed in conference call comments that its chip packaging changes have led to improvements of 20 percent in both speed and THINNESS and 10 percent in thermal performance.