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Samsung to Produce A9 Chips for Apple's Next-Generation Devices

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Longtime Apple rival and supplier Samsung will be responsible for manufacturing the A9 chips for Apple's next-generation iPhone and iPad, Re/code confirmed today. Over the past several months, there's been a lot of confusion over whether Samsung or Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) would produce Apple's A9 chips, but recent rumors suggest that Samsung's technological advances have put it ahead of TSMC.

Apple signed a chip production deal with TSMC back in 2013 with the hopes of diversifying its supply chain sources and reducing its reliance on Samsung because of ongoing legal battles, but it has been unable to break away from Samsung for its A-series processors. Both TSMC and Samsung produced 20-nanometer A8 and A8X processors for the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus in 2014, though TSMC handled the bulk of the orders.

A8.jpg
20-nanometer A8 chip in the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, via Chipworks​
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At a time when Samsung's mobile division is seeing profit loss due to flagging sales, the company's semiconductor business has helped to balance out some of the losses with continued growth. During the last quarter, Samsung's chip division earned 2.7 trillion won, making supplier relationships like the one that it has with Apple highly important to the company.

Samsung is reportedly already manufacturing A9 chips for Apple, built on its 14-nanometer chip process that has outpaced TSMC's production capabilities. As detailed by Re/code, the 14-nanometer process will result in smaller chips that use less power.
That's because Samsung holds a technological edge over TSMC when it comes to the latest manufacturing process. Samsung has managed to shrink the size of the transistors on its chips to 14 nanometers -- effectively packing more processing power into a smaller space and consuming less power. TSMC is still at 20 nanometers.
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Samsung has not confirmed that it is producing chips for Apple, but Samsung semiconductor president Dr. Kinam Kim said in October that Samsung is expecting chip profits to grow over the coming year thanks to demand for its 14-nanometer chips.

Little is known about Apple's next-generation iPhone, but based on past releases and upgrade cycles, the new smartphones will use A9 chips and may feature updates to the camera. Rumors have also suggested that Apple may be planning to incorporate an A9 chip into its "iPad Pro," which may debut in the second or third quarter of 2015, and the A9 in some form will undoubtedly also make an appearance in 2015 iPad Air/mini upgrades.

Article Link: Samsung to Produce A9 Chips for Apple's Next-Generation Devices
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2015/02/04/samsung-producing-a9-chips-for-apple/
A9 chip is going to be an absolute beast. The power Apple is getting out of this, with the combination of hardware and software, is pretty staggering -- especially considering the benchmarks are competitive with Android devices running at twice the clockspeed and twice the number of cores.

Apple are definitely in this for the long run. If they continue pushing the hardware it's going to substantially pay off in 5 years.
 
Rumors have also suggested that Apple may be planning to incorporate an A9 chip into its "iPad Pro," which may debut in the second or third quarter of 2014
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Surely you mean 2015
 
keysofanxiety said:
Apple are definitely in this for the long run. If they continue pushing the hardware it's going to substantially pay off in 5 years.
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"in 5 years"??? I believe Apple has already realized "substantial" several times over. They just had the biggest quarter of any company ever. That almost reads like the pay off is still way out there in the future. The way they're going, in 5 years, they might be ruling the world, er, I mean iWorld. ;)
 
dmylrea said:
Guaranteed it will be thinner, lighter, and faster than the current gen. :D
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Well...since that is a year and a half away, I will enjoy what I have now and plan on picking up an 6s in the fall. :)

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WhoDaKat said:
Just sell your iPhone and you can get a new one each year. I am interested in seeing how well the resale value on 6+ holds up.
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I will be enough to cover most of the cost of the new iPhone 6s and more. Most of the time I break even on 2 year old phones when getting the next iPhone.
 
HobeSoundDarryl said:
"in 5 years"??? I believe Apple has already realized "substantial" several times over. They just had the biggest quarter of any company ever. That almost reads like the pay off is still way out there in the future. The way they're going, in 5 years, they might be ruling the world, er, I mean iWorld. ;)
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Very true, though I meant more in the context of CPU design. It's not likely they'll leapfrog Intel but they could well overtake AMD. Of course, at the moment they don't manufacture or design their chips for any devices other than their own, so I guess it wouldn't really matter too much.
 
Quad core A9 with 2gb ram iphones , i'm crossing my fingers hard.
Doesn't matter who makes them.
 
MacFather said:
Will the iPad mini 4 have an A9 or A8?
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No idea, but if it is released alongside the iPad Air 3 in the fall (or whenever they release a new 9.7" iPad with the A9 chip), it will probably have the A8 in it.

Supposedly, an updated iPad Mini (with the A8) was going to eat into the profits of the 6 Plus (which is a BS concept to me), so they're going to keep it a processor generation behind so that people buy the 6 Plus, not the Mini.
 
allanfries said:
Could this be the start of better battery life?
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Yes, Samsung fab is better than TSMC hence the reason for Apple switching back. Battery life under use and also standby battery life will get better. 32nm Exynos already has 6 day standby battery life so imagine 14nm.
 
allanfries said:
Could this be the start of better battery life?
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absolutely, smaller manufacturing node at 14nm means a smaller SoC/Chip, a more overall power efficient chip, and also being quite a bit more powerful, which means= more room for bigger battery capacity then current generation, so improved power efficiency and better performance in the Apple A9 SoC, and also a slightly bigger battery bump up in the 6s and 6s plus = even better battery life

i cant wait to see how awesome the 6s plus is gonna perform on battery life, a 14nm Apple A9 SoC with a slightly better battery then the current 2900 mAh in the Plus will be absolutely incredible

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Mattsasa said:
Does Samsung produce the chips for samsung Galaxy phones ?? Honest question
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They use Qualcomm in most of their Galaxy devices, and Exynos is Samsung's own custom designed SoC/Chip. rumors are saying Samsung is not going to be using qualcomm anymore and is going to be using all Exynos SoC's in all future Galaxy devices which would make it like Apple and how Apple does it with their Apple "A" series processors
 
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