Shane Cole
Apple will reportedly add a second U.S. chip fabrication plant to its supply chain, partnering with California-based GlobalFoundries to produce A-series processors at a new $6 billion facility in upstate New York.
The "floorplan" of Apple's latest A-series processor, the A7. | Source: Chipworks
Current Apple fab partner Samsung will help to ramp up production at the new facility, according to a Monday afternoon report from the Albany Times Union. The site, in Malta, New York, was rumored to be in the running for a slot in Apple's supply chain late last year.
Logistical details of the arrangement between Apple, Samsung, and Global Foundries are not known, and a GlobalFoundries spokesman declined to comment when asked by the Times Union. Samsung is currently the sole supplier of A-series processors for Apple, fabricating the chips at a plant in Austin, Texas.
Many of the earlier rumors swirling around the Malta deal pegged Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), rather than Global Foundries, as Apple's partner. At the time, the venture was thought to go by the codename "Project Azalea."
As late as last month, whispers that Samsung had lost as much as half of the contract for Apple's purported next-generation "A8" processor to TSMC were circulating from sources in Samsung's home turf of South Korea. It is possible, though unlikely, that both Samsung and TSMC could be involved in the New York deal.
Mike Wuerthele
William Gallagher
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Wesley Hilliard
34 Comments
Cool- I'm all for it. The less reliance on Samsung, the better.
Why would Samfxxx help to start up the 'production of its competitor? Plus spending 6 B to scale up a soon to be phased out generation of a chip design...hey, be more creative in making up a story...Bad rumor.
[SIZE=3][SIZE=4][/SIZE][/SIZE][SIZE=3][/SIZE]mdriftmeyer has been calling this for a couple of years now... If true good call
Hard to know what to make of all these rumors.
If it's true that Apple has gone with GloFo, I suspect it's because GloFo was willing to cede a level of ownership and control to Apple that companies like TSMC and Intel were not. I doubt it's because of any technological advantage from GloFo. But perhaps with Apple's business, GloFo can more quickly catch up with the competition. And perhaps because GloFo also builds x86 processors for AMD, Apple might have been able to strike a deal with them along the lines of "you can't use our fabs and the technology we pay for to make other ARM chips, but you can use them to make x86 chips" -- that could have been appealing to GloFo.
[quote name="water cooler" url="/t/160673/globalfoundries-to-build-a-series-chips-for-apple-in-new-york-report#post_2433188"]Why would Samfxxx help to start up the 'production of its competitor? [/quote] It could well be that the actual customer is Samsung even if the end-customer is Apple. TSMC and Samsung happily work together in some other areas such as developing the machinery to produce upcoming silicon designs.