With ‘A6’ chip, Apple likely to move SoC production away from Samsung in 2012

15 years ago

“Apple’s increasingly tenuous relationship with Samsung as a component supplier for its mobile devices could end next year, according to numerous sources inside the semiconductor industry,” Chris Foresman reports for Ars Technica. “The company will likely tap contract fab Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company to build its next-generation ARM SoCs, currently dubbed ‘A6,’ sometime in 2012,” Foresman reports.

“Dan Heyler, a semiconductor analyst with Merrill Lynch in Taipei, told the China-based Commercial Times newspaper on Friday that TSMC will most likely be producing ‘A6’ processors for Apple, a next-generation ARM-based design, in 2012,” Foresman reports. “That jibes with what Ars has heard from a plugged-in source—that the chatter on the foundry grapevine about an impending Apple/TSMC deal is growing deafening.”

Foresman reports, “There’s still the remote possibility that Apple could move to Intel if it can find a workable deal to combine its low-power ARM designs with Intel’s new 22nm three-dimensional transistor process. In the meantime, however, Apple has few choices out there to fab its mobile SoCs, and ‘not Samsung’ seems like a smart option at this point in time.”