“Apple supplier TSMC will reportedly invest a massive $25 billion in 5 nanometer node technology in its quest to fabricate next-generation chips which could help power iOS devices,” Luke Dormehl reports for Cult of Mac.
“No timeframe was announced for the investment,” Dormehl reports. “Since the company is supposedly currently fabricating 7nm chips for the 2018 iPhone, this will hopefully help TSMC hold onto its status as Apple’s A-series chipmaker for at least a while longer.”
Dormehl reports, “TSMC has been the exclusive producer of Apple’s A-series chips since the A9-series days.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Damn, things are getting small!
Wow! That’s small.
That’s what she said.
Apple should get into data-harvesting because it doesn’t require such costly outlay to get profitable returns.
In other news, Intel… who am I kidding, there’s NO news there 🙂
& other non-news, Samsung has not even approached the existing chip performance, which has to be another notch downward for Samsung.
Wonder if Samsung will announce they will commit $25 billion to get to 5 nanometer CPUs, just so it sounds like they will “be there” when Apple ships?
What exactly is your beef with Intel, which happens to be a critical supplier for Apple’s Macs and iOS devices? Apple seems to like them. Why don’t you?
Also, in case you missed it, there are plenty of articles indicating that the next one or two generations of Apple chips will not be shrinking the die size. There are actually a lot more important things that go into a chipset than just the hyped nanometer die measurement, which every company does differently for their own marketing purposes.
Everything getting small but the investment size. That’s huge! Nicely done TSMC, you’re about to rule the world.
I might be off here, help me if you can.
The 6502, the chip used in the Apple ][, was 0.001 of a meter or about 142,000 larger then 7mn. This is the distance between items on the chip.
So in 1977 if you went 1 mile by the same ratio you would go less then a half inch.
node nm = half the distance between identical features
So 7nm = 14nm between identical features