Most of the claimed parts leaks to date have been for the iPhone 8, but there are a few photos purporting to be of iPhone 7s components. These include shots of the A11 chip destined for this year’s top-end iPhone, also reported to be used in the 7s.
A logic board photo sent to us by a source tallies with one posted earlier …
Samsung is said to be considering spinning off its chipmaking division in response to losing Apple’s A-Series chip business.
Apple’s A-series chip orders for iPhones and iPads used to be split between Samsung and TSMC, but Apple dropped Samsung for the A10 chip in the iPhone 7 and is reported to be doing the same for the A11 chip in next year’s iPhone …
TSMC may have won the exclusive contract to produce the A10 chip in the iPhone 7 and be on track to do the same for the A11 chip for next year’s iPhone, but the company isn’t taking future business for granted. Nikkei Asian Review reports that the company is already planning to build a new plant to create 5nm and 3nm chips to help win future Apple business …
While Apple’s orders for the A9 chip in the iPhone 6s/Plus were split between the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company and Samsung, we heard back in February that TSMC was to be the sole supplier of the A10 chip in the iPhone 7. A new report from Korea claims that the same is true of the A11 chip destined for next year’s iPhone.
The report appears in the Chinese-language Economic Daily News, via Digitimes.
TSMC is already the exclusive manufacturer of Apple’s A10 chip which will power the upcoming iPhone series slated for launch in September 2016. The Taiwan-based foundry will continue to be the sole supplier of Apple’s next-generation A11 processor that will be built on a 10nm FinFET process, the report indicated, without citing its sources.
TSMC is believed to have a technological edge on its Korean rival, beating Samsung in the race to develop 10-nanometer processes …
Apple chipmaker TSMC and chip designer ARM have announced that they will work together to create a 7nm FinFET process expected to enter early production in late 2017 and mass production in 2018. This would put it on track for an A11 chip in the iPhone 8.
Apple originally used ARM chips in its iOS devices, switching to its own custom chip when it launched the iPhone 5, though still using an ARM instruction set. TSMC has so far been one of two A-processor chipmakers alongside Samsung, but is rumored to be the sole producer for the A10 chip in the iPhone 7.
