Apple ups orders for 5nm chips from TSMC, presumably for new iPhone

Chipmaker TSMC has lost a significant order from Huawei, only to find Apple buying up all of its production capacity, for what is believed to be the "iPhone 12."

Apple has long been using supplier TSMC to manufacture its A-series processors, specifically 7-nanometer ones as used in iPhone XS's A12. Apple has also been known to be developing a 5nm processor with the company, and now industry sources report that orders have increased.

According to the China Taiwan Economic Daily, Apple has asked TSMC to produce almost 10,000 more processors in the fourth quarter of this year. The use of a 5nm processor and being produced in that quarter suggests that the order is for the A14 which is to be used in the iPhone 12.

The move reportedly follows Huawei's cancellation of approximately that same amount. While there is no indication from either TSMC or Huawei why the order was reduced, the phone maker is currently facing new criminal charges in the U.S., and has been substantially affected by the coronavirus.

TSMC is now said to have adjusted plans for its 5nm process because of the impact of COVID-19 on demand, though reportedly it remains on schedule.

The China Taiwan Economic Daily report citing unnamed industry sources, was first spotted by Chinese-language site IT Home.

21 Comments

danvdr 19 Years · 24 comments

About 4 years ago

10,000? Seems like a pretty small number.

tmay 11 Years · 6456 comments

danvdr said:

10,000? Seems like a pretty small number.

I'm thinking 10,000 wafers. For a 300 mm diameter wafer, that's probably 20 to 30 million processors total, depending on die size and yield.

joeljrichards 6 Years · 23 comments

I think we'll see variants of the A14 processor in more than just the phones so it may that Apple is thinking ahead to other refreshed lines: iPad Pros, iPads, Apple TV, and maybe MacBooks.

tht 23 Years · 5654 comments

tmay said:

danvdr said:

10,000? Seems like a pretty small number.

I'm thinking 10,000 wafers.

As a first order approximation, each wafer is 300 mm in diameter and a typical Apple iPhone SoC is 100 mm^2, those 10k wafers equate to about 7 million SoCs. There will be losses so it would be something like 5m instead.

Apple will sell on order 40m to 50m A14 SoC models in cal Q4 2020, so not a lot, but this is on top of what Apple has already ordered. Always nice to have more capacity.

Would be nicer if those wafers were for Mac ARM processors.

avon b7 20 Years · 8046 comments

The term I have been hearing is '10,000 pieces of production capacity'.

At the start of the year Huawei stated its consumer division would have a difficult year.

Then CBU sales were up in January, down in February and up again in March.

Then three days ago Huawei's CEO of CBU went on record as stating he expected growth rather than contraction for 2020.

That makes this rumour anybody's guess although given how the year has started, it is perfectly feasible.