Mikey Campbell
A report on Wednesday claims Samsung will likely take over fabrication orders for Apple's next-generation custom A-series mobile device processors from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. in 2015.
Apple manufacturing partner TSMC, which reportedly began shipping A-series chips for the "iPhone 6" last week, will be replaced by Samsung when fabrication of next-generation SoCs starts in the second half of 2015, reports Reuters.
The report cites a research note from KGI Securities analyst Michael Liu, who attended a TSMC investor conference on Wednesday. Liu said Samsung foundries will in effect replace TSMC as the main manufacturer of advanced 14-nanometer APs ordered by Apple and Qualcomm. According to Taiwanese publications, Qualcomm has already placed orders with Samsung for the next-gen silicon. Evidence of Apple's orders has not yet been reported.
After years of rumors and speculation, Apple inked a deal with TSMC to produce its mobile chips last June, the first of which are expected to see iOS device lineup this fall.
Today's report lines up with a rumor from early July that claimed Samsung landed orders for a trial run of Apple's "A9" chip, which is said to be built on a 14-nanometer process.
In addition to the alleged swing back to Samsung, TSMC Chairman Morris Chang said during the conference that his company's marketshare of 16-nanometer chips will be smaller than "a major competitor" in 2015. Going into 2016, however, Chang forecasts TSMC to regain its lead.
Andrew Orr
Christine McKee
Malcolm Owen
Amber Neely
William Gallagher
19 Comments
Reality: No single source fab takes over any embedded space product, now with a joint global partnership from Samsung and Global Foundries.
Either pull your heads firmly out of your bum or stop reporting such crap. The moment that relationship was forged ended all speculation on fab manufacturing for Samsung and Global Foundries regarding 20nm/14nm LPE and 14nm LPP FinFET and beyond.
Oh look! Here's the new presentation:
http://globalfoundries.com/ldgpages/videos/dac-2014-ip-talks!---globalfoundries-14nm-full-platform-offering
Well maybe Apple really switched to 20 nm in TSMC and it's obvious to jump to 14/16 nm as soon as possible. And maybe this is just some rummor crated by samsung's people fearing of what will happen when they will lose their most lucrative silicon consumer. The problem is I can't see Apple jumping back and forth between two different processes which requires modifying of the entire SoC which needs to be made in the beginning of the development of the SoC and that requires few years for transition as it is the case with TSMC. Second, samsung doesn't even have a 20nm class process... Which should be out any time now if we assume it will take two years from 32 nm to 20 nm.... And they are already talking about 14 nm. Even intel is struggling to bring out their 14 nm process two and half years later after their 22 nm process, the issues on that node are owerhelming as the structure of the matter itself stands in our way.
Multiple suppliers are always better than a single (point of failure) supplier. This is yet another benefit of using an ARM architecture as the basis for the AX chip line. A benefit that Apple doesn't enjoy in the Mac line. Not yet anyway.
Why don't Apple manufacture their own micro chips, so that they can stop doing business with Samsung?
This sounds like a Samsung generated rumor;
"that Samsung is taking over supply control of a critical Apple part".