TSMC will continue to be Apple's sole chip producer for the 2019 'A13' processor
TSMC will continue to be the only supplier of Apple's A-series chips in 2019, according to a report, with the iPhone component supplier believed to secure orders for next year's "A13" chip following its success with this year's A12 production.
The exclusive supplier of A-series chips since 2016, murmurs within the supply chain expect Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) to continue being the only firm producing the Apple-designed chips.
According to Digitimes, TSMC will fulfill all "A13" orders, and will likely help the company increase its market share in chip production. After acquiring a market share of 56 percent in the "global pure-play foundry market" in the first half of 2018, in part due to the A12, the Apple orders are thought by report sources to help propel the share to 60 percent next year.
TSMC continues to be a major supplier despite alleged efforts by Samsung to become one of Apple's A-series suppliers once again. Samsung was once the exclusive A-series manufacturer, but as competition and legal battles between it and Apple intensified, orders migrated over to TSMC, who now enjoys the monopoly of supply.
In June, Samsung was claimed to be in full development of an integrated fan-out (InFO) packaging technology and had mastered 7-nanometer extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUV), which would compete against TSMC's own 7-nanometer process. TSMC's InFO technology is said to make its process more competitive than its counterparts, with the company also tipped to announce the first commercially-available 7-nanometer EUV process, ahead of Samsung.
The relative lack of processor producers who work at the 7-nanometer level means there is little competition for TSMC in the field, aside from Samsung. The shift down to a 7-nanometer process is a difficult and costly undertaking for chipmakers, with the majority steering clear of it for the moment.
Both Qualcomm and MediaTek have postponed their own 7-nanometer process launches until 2019, according to reports. Globalfoundries has put its 7-nanometer FinFET technology development on hold, while UMC has shifted its focus to "mature" and speciality process nodes.
Meanwhile, TSMC's mastery of 7-nanometer production is expected to garner orders to produce chips under contract for AMD, Huawei, MediaTek, Nvidia, and Qualcomm.
The exclusive supplier of A-series chips since 2016, murmurs within the supply chain expect Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) to continue being the only firm producing the Apple-designed chips.
According to Digitimes, TSMC will fulfill all "A13" orders, and will likely help the company increase its market share in chip production. After acquiring a market share of 56 percent in the "global pure-play foundry market" in the first half of 2018, in part due to the A12, the Apple orders are thought by report sources to help propel the share to 60 percent next year.
TSMC continues to be a major supplier despite alleged efforts by Samsung to become one of Apple's A-series suppliers once again. Samsung was once the exclusive A-series manufacturer, but as competition and legal battles between it and Apple intensified, orders migrated over to TSMC, who now enjoys the monopoly of supply.
In June, Samsung was claimed to be in full development of an integrated fan-out (InFO) packaging technology and had mastered 7-nanometer extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUV), which would compete against TSMC's own 7-nanometer process. TSMC's InFO technology is said to make its process more competitive than its counterparts, with the company also tipped to announce the first commercially-available 7-nanometer EUV process, ahead of Samsung.
The relative lack of processor producers who work at the 7-nanometer level means there is little competition for TSMC in the field, aside from Samsung. The shift down to a 7-nanometer process is a difficult and costly undertaking for chipmakers, with the majority steering clear of it for the moment.
Both Qualcomm and MediaTek have postponed their own 7-nanometer process launches until 2019, according to reports. Globalfoundries has put its 7-nanometer FinFET technology development on hold, while UMC has shifted its focus to "mature" and speciality process nodes.
Meanwhile, TSMC's mastery of 7-nanometer production is expected to garner orders to produce chips under contract for AMD, Huawei, MediaTek, Nvidia, and Qualcomm.
Comments
The biggest impediment to a CPU architecture switch for a PC is software compatibility. That really can’t be done without a forced migration plus offering developers a larger market to sell into to make the development costs worth it. Windows/ARM failed for this reason and will continue to fail for this reason.
If it is done, it will be like the PPC to x86 switch, or the 68k to PPC switch, they’ll offer separate machines, one ARM, one Intel, and phase out the Intel ones over a 2, 3 maybe 4 years.
The writing is also on the wall. Or it is a big trial balloon. Apple wants developers to move their apps to Marzipan. If they do a good job, an x86 to ARM switch will be seemless. So, 2020 if Marzipan is the number one thing coming out of WWDC19. Maybe Fall 2019 for a first PC style machine with an Apple ARM. It will depend on how well Marzipan can accommodate complex apps like FCPX or Xcode. If you see Apple announce Xcode using Marzipan, the writing is burning on the wall telling developers than x86 will be phased out.
The other option, which isn’t going to happen, is to force developers to architecture independent software like HTML/JS, or a Java style clone. Apple will have hard enough time to move developers to Swift let alone a lower performance language that will make certain apps much less performant.
Computational photography is a new buzzword feature. This type of thing will continually suck up all the computational performance that is available to it. Web page apps will continue to soak up all the CPU power possible. There can never be enough CPU and bandwidth available for ads which is 99% of what most web pages are today. Apple as created an AR file format. That can eat any devices lunch. In the future, VR functionality will require even more. You can just keep on going.
For PC functionality, the only difference will be larger thermal envelopes will allow for more computing power.
But another facet that could influence the impact of an A13 in an iPhone is the concurrent inclusion of 5G communications. The combination of the two (CPU power and communication enhancements) have driven most of all of the major advances in computing since there has been computing.
(The other factor has been storage capacity and cost -- particularly after it transitioned to "real time" (disk) storage from mag tape.)
As far as the Switch to ARM, that’ll go MacBook (possibly with a special version with pencil support) then Mac mini and iMac models. Then the next year the MacBook Pro, iMac Pro and Mac Pro will move over.
For one Apple will simply recompile XCode to run on ARM. They will expect developers to do the same. Beyond that they have already built into the app stores the systems required to get the right machine code to the platform it is installing on.
As for MS supposed failure with ARM that is more an issue with MS and their ecosystem. The Linux world has had zero problems with Linux on ARM when it comes to ecosystem acceptance. Considering the average developer in Apples ecosystem is smarter than the average developer in Micro Soft land I don’t see Apple having any issues at all with software support on ARM.
Beyond that you need to consider how the vast majority of Apples customers use their machines. The overwhelming majority of the apps would be native on day one.
Most stupid logic ever.
Not to sound mean but use some imagination. This is a pet peeve of mine. I remember people arguing that graphics wouldn't go beyond the Xbox 360 capabilities...
I can think of a few features that will stump current iPhone.
How about shooting 3D VR content for interactive entertainment?
Console-level games?
Music creation?
3D Animation for movies?
Facebook browsing was near flawless on the first iPhone but time has passed and Facebook/other services will continue to evolve and add more features. I'm sure people in the 90s couldn't comprehend why computers would need more power. Wasn't it Bill Gates who said we wouldn't need a gig of RAM?
in reality, Apple will have to deal with this problem, and yes, it is a problem. Just moving from Carbon to Cocoa cost Adobe, Microsoft and a number of other large developers, including Apple itself, quite a bit of time.
i still think the best solution is to add a number of x86 instructions to their ARM SoC for this purpose. Individual instructions are not patented, or copyrighted. They’ve been used by numerous other processor manufacturers over the years. I want to make it clear, that those instructions aren’t actually x86 instructions, as they been used elsewhere. They are just instructions that Intel puts in the chips.
You’ll have to explain how that would work. What would be the purpose of that?