Mass production of Apple Silicon's A14X processor to start in Q4 2020
New reports from the supply chain claim that the Apple Silicon ARM processor A14X will enter mass production in the fourth quarter of the year.
Chip wafers [via Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., Ltd.]
Ahead of its promised first Apple Silicon Mac, the A14X ARM processor that is said to power the MacBook and MacBook Pro -- plus the iPad Pro -- is said to be about to enter mass production. Processor manufacturer TSMC is to start making the chip in the fourth quarter.
According to Digitimes, TSMC is expected to be fabricating between 5,000 and 6,000 wafers per month, using its 5nm EUV process.. Each wafer contains several hundreds of the A14X processor, which will be broken up into separate chips later in the manufacturing process.
Citing unnamed sources, Digitimes, component suppliers believe that Apple's increasing adoption of its own System-in-Package (SIP) microprocessor technology is starting a trend for the industry. It claims that TSMC, plus others including ASE Technology, and IC substrate makers including Unimicron Technology, are gearing up for increased demand for the technology.
Recently, TSMC revealed potential performance and power-consumption improvements in Apple's A14 chipset. It has also reportedly been working on a 3-nanometer process that might be used for future Apple Silicon Macs.
Apple CEO Tim Cook said that the first Apple Silicon Macs will ship before the end of 2020.
Digitimes has a poor reputation for drawing conclusions about Apple products from its sources. It has a much stronger one for reports surrounding Apple's supply chain.
Chip wafers [via Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., Ltd.]
Ahead of its promised first Apple Silicon Mac, the A14X ARM processor that is said to power the MacBook and MacBook Pro -- plus the iPad Pro -- is said to be about to enter mass production. Processor manufacturer TSMC is to start making the chip in the fourth quarter.
According to Digitimes, TSMC is expected to be fabricating between 5,000 and 6,000 wafers per month, using its 5nm EUV process.. Each wafer contains several hundreds of the A14X processor, which will be broken up into separate chips later in the manufacturing process.
Citing unnamed sources, Digitimes, component suppliers believe that Apple's increasing adoption of its own System-in-Package (SIP) microprocessor technology is starting a trend for the industry. It claims that TSMC, plus others including ASE Technology, and IC substrate makers including Unimicron Technology, are gearing up for increased demand for the technology.
Recently, TSMC revealed potential performance and power-consumption improvements in Apple's A14 chipset. It has also reportedly been working on a 3-nanometer process that might be used for future Apple Silicon Macs.
Apple CEO Tim Cook said that the first Apple Silicon Macs will ship before the end of 2020.
Digitimes has a poor reputation for drawing conclusions about Apple products from its sources. It has a much stronger one for reports surrounding Apple's supply chain.
Comments
humongous even. A power unconstrained monster in comparison.
I guess the MacBook Air would be okay with an A14X but I would expect the Macs to have more cores, especially the MacBook Pro rumoured for next weeks event. But having two A14X SOCs would be nice, and efficient from a manufacturing perspective
I don’t really want a MBP that is only performance equivalent to the current Intel MBP, I want something that is far ahead in more than just heat and battery.
i wonder if we’ll see a difference between Mac and iPad in clock speed. Perhaps also in RAM performance.
Sort of. Multiple cores on a single chip have a bus which connects them. This lets them share some data about what they are doing with the other cores on the same chip, so the OS knows which cores have available time for work. This bus can be extended out past the physical chip to let you use many separate chips. For example, the 2006-2012 Mac Pro models had sockets for two processors (yes, some of the 2009-2012 only had a single socket on their drawer, but the same motherboard could take a two-socket drawer).
What you can't do is connect two processors together and present them to the OS as a single, faster core. More processors means you can do more things at the same speed, not that you can do one thing faster. Fortunately, a lot of processor-intensive work can be split into chunks which can be worked in parallel.
The A12X already keeps pace with current high-end laptop chips from Intel. A13 cores are faster and more efficient. A14 cores will be faster and more efficient still. With laptop cooling, I expect the laptop A14 to be able to perform extremely well for the bottom of Apple's range (MacBook Air, 2 TB3 MBP).
That would make the chip “specifically made for Macs”, but still usable in iPads.
Like how net neutrality said telcos couldn’t extort Netflix for more money under threat of deprioritization, so the telcos just slowed everything down and “let” companies pay for “fast lanes”. Technically fits within the promise.
Plus everything above the low end would definitely need a Mac-specific chip for a 15W+ power envelope.
Part of that approach is knowing in advance what can already be achieved and what is likely to be achieved in the near term. I think that Apple will probably balance the trade-offs in each area to achieve about 85-90% of what is theoretically possible, to give themselves some headroom in reliability and future improvements.
As for the actual, real-world results... it could be anything from "meh" (which we will probably get from some sources regardless), through "raised eyebrows" to "jaw-dropping" and quite possibly even "stunning." And I don't know what will happen, but I'm really looking forward to a new laptop at some point in the next 12 months.