Apple placing orders for quad-core, 20nm chips at TSMC?
updated 11:50 am EDT, Fri October 12, 2012
Quad-core, 20nm chips made by TSMC coming to Apple products in 2014?
Apple is, once again, said to be courting Taiwanese chip manufacturer TSMC to supply its future chips. The products in question are 20nm, quad-core chips that are expected to power Apple products in 2014, including a future version of the iPad.
The risk production process may begin as soon as November, the China Economic News Service reported, with volume production likely to start in the fourth quarter of 2013. Other Apple products believed to get the more efficient quad-core chips include the Apple TV and MacBooks. The iPhone will continue to use a dual-core chip to optimize battery life, Citigroup analyst J.T. Hsu believes.
TSMC's 20nm architecture is said to bring improvements of 30 percent in terms of speed, be 1.9 times more dense, and use 25 percent less power than its current 28nm chips. Current iOS devices use 32nm chips made by Samsung, including the A5 (iPad, Apple TV) and A6 (iPhone 5). [via MacRumors]
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2014 prediction:
iOS devices: dual-core A7.
MacBook Air: quad-core A7.
Where A7 is a 64-bit, Apple-designed SoC based on the ARMv8 spec.