iPhone 6 and 6 Plus Use 20-Nanometer A8 Processor From TSMC

[barondebxl]

"One tab should be enough for everybody." – Microsoft prior IE7

Thats microsoft. Were talking about apple here. Besides, microsoft gives you the options of many tabs too no?

 

[Iconoclysm]

Actually concerns me. Despite the hate on these forums, Samsung is really good at what they do. Hopefully no logic board failures down the road.

They're good a producing a higher yield of useable chips, not a better quality product.

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Because it's a $1,000 phone and you should be able to have as many tabs open as you want.

That's not the case on any phone or computer.

 

[gnasher729]

Apple needs to ditch the foreign suppliers and design/build their chips right here in the USA.

Their chips are designed in the USA.

However, outside of Intel and IBM there is nobody in the USA who could build that kind of chip, and both of these are busy building their own chips.

 

[fertilized-egg]

I remember when we tried to get the contract for ps3 and xbox360 and lost. Then management told us losing was a good thing because we would have lost money on every chip.

Sounds like a running theme in the console industry:

Nvidia gave AMD the PS4 because console margins are terrible

Apple needs to ditch the foreign suppliers and design/build their chips right here in the USA.

Their chips are designed in the USA.

However, outside of Intel and IBM there is nobody in the USA who could build that kind of chip, and both of these are busy building their own chips.

If the rumor is correct, a lot of the next generation chip will be made at the Globalfoundries fab in Malta, New York. Also Samsung already makes a lot of chips in Texas.

Apple doesn't like owning its own factory even when it's in the USA. Even for the Mac Pro, they outsourced it to another company instead of building their own. It's not something exclusive to Apple. When Motorola was trumpeting their effort to build Moto X in the USA, they were using a contractor too.

 

[Mercifull]

It's a good job the Galaxy S5 is waterproof because there must be a lot of tears being shed in Seoul over it right now.

 

[aaronvan]

Their chips are designed in the USA.

However, outside of Intel and IBM there is nobody in the USA who could build that kind of chip, and both of these are busy building their own chips.

That's true; however, Apple could make than investment if they so desired. I read that an average chip manufacturing facility costs around $1 billion (US). That is some long green but Apple easily has that much cash. No doubt they have studied the issue and decided it doesn't make business sense right now. Perhaps they'll be of a different mind sometime in the future.

 

[hanafuda]

Yeahey! A quad-core phone almost as fast as two dual-core phones. Now I begin to understand this core-fetish on the Android side. It makes them look competitive. Now if only more tasks would be parallelizable.

I really enjoy the excuses from the android crowd.

-That's not a real world test.
-Geekbench is biased towards apple products.
-The S5 is an old phone.

 

[cmaier]

That's true; however, Apple could make than investment if they so desired. I read that an average chip manufacturing facility costs around $1 billion (US). That is some long green but Apple easily has that much cash. No doubt they have studied the issue and decided it doesn't make business sense right now. Perhaps they'll be of a different mind sometime in the future.

It was around $1B 10 years ago when I used to design microprocessors. Now it's gotta be a lot more. But still, yeah, they could afford it. But they'd need patent protection, employees, etc. Easiest thing to do would be to do a joint fab with TSMC or someone, where they get the entire production run and then turn it over to TSMC after the third or fourth year (they can use it for apple tv variants or apple watch variants after it is too outdated for iPhone/iPad), at which point they've already built the next line.

Second easiest thing would be to buy someone, like UMC or GlobalFoundries.

 

[k995]

Apple would probably expect to sell a minimum of 250 million devices with A8's over the general two year processor lifecyle given that the iPhone 6 models will be next years mid range models. It's also conceivable that a variant will be in future Apple TV's and iPad's.

To me it's a slam dunk to design an optimized processor family and have various foundry partners fab them at the volumes that I mention.

Yes but its not that easy, its not 10 million a month for 24 months it has peaks , if apple has enough fabs itself then at times they are doing nothing AND apple still has to make sure it has a smaller better SOC every year (which is a massive investment).

Apple would actually pay more and run more risks at the end, or it has to start accapting orders from other as well.

 

[TMay]

Yes but its not that easy, its not 10 million a month for 24 months it has peaks , if apple has enough fabs itself then at times they are doing nothing AND apple still has to make sure it has a smaller better SOC every year (which is a massive investment).

Apple would actually pay more and run more risks at the end, or it has to start accapting orders from other as well.

Apple doesn't, yet at least, own the fab, and the process that Apple uses would be and is today available to other customers, though Apple may pay big to tie up the line with its production. The fabs are running other customer's parts when Apple isn't. They are independent.

As for design, Apple is more than willing to pay the design costs for every new die and process, and arguably is pretty good at it, and because of the volume and customization, this is actually a significant benefit to their products.

 

[Stanick]

Great news. Apple should move away from Samsung to keep the secret of new devices. There is no ‘Chinese Wall’ in Samsung.

What century are you living in. Business is business. If Samsung produces a good quality and revenue efficient part for Apple I can assure you that Apple will be very happy with that.

 

[k995]

Apple doesn't, yet at least, own the fab, and the process that Apple uses would be and is today available to other customers, though Apple may pay big to tie up the line with its production. The fabs are running other customer's parts when Apple isn't. They are independent.



As for design, Apple is more than willing to pay the design costs for every new die and process, and arguably is pretty good at it, and because of the volume and customization, this is actually a significant benefit to their products.

Euh you should follow the thread , the statement was " buy fabs = better for apple "


Again as already stated why , i doubt that very high .