“Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., Ltd. (TSMC), the world’s largest semiconductor foundry by market shares now, has allegedly started trial production of the A6 processor in cooperation with Apple Inc. with the production design to be taped out in the first quarter of next year and scheduled to be publicly unveiled in the second quarter at the earliest, according to industry sources,” Steve Chuang reports for China Economic News.
“Accordingly, TSMC has applied its newest 28-nanometer process and 3D stacking technologies to produce the next-generation processor A6, which is based on the ARM architecture and will undergo TSMC’s cutting-edge silicon interposer and bump on trace (BOT) methodologies,” Chuang reports. “Noteworthily, Taiwan’s leading semiconductor testing and packaging company, Advanced Semiconductor Engineering Inc, is expected to also benefit from the A6 processor production, noted the sources, saying that the company, which has partnered TSMC to develop the 3D chip-packaging technology, is very likely to snap up the order for processor packaging in the future.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Note to Samsung: Those who play with fire, risk getting burned.
Related articles:
Apple’s A6 processor for iOS devices: 28-nm, 3D IC and likely made by TSMC; could show up in future Macs – July 15, 2011
With ‘A6′ chip, Apple likely to move SoC production away from Samsung in 2012 – June 27, 2011
RUMOR: Apple inks deal with TSMC foundry for A5 processor; possible setback for Samsung – March 9, 2011
Slowly but surely Apple is running down its reliance on Samsung. Ask IBM what happens if you piss off Apple.
I guess I’m asking, because I don’t know how Apple and Ibm are at odds.
TimD is referring to the PowerPC situation – IBM let Apple down bigtime, prompting the switch to Intel.
IBM failed to deliver the performance and performance per watt that Apple wanted, but I think a big chunk of the switch to intel was just to remove the whole windows problem.
Now Apple can say “you want to run windows? fine, dual boot” and that gets over a lot of people’s hesitation to try the Mac.
I think IBM was more of an excuse than anything– intel is having the same problems. Here it is 6-7 years later and chips are still 2-3GHz.
“I think IBM was more of an excuse than anything– intel is having the same problems. Here it is 6-7 years later and chips are still 2-3GHz.”
No, not at all. The PowerPC had fallen way behind Intel, and the roadmap looked far worse. It was essentially a dead end. If running Windows was the main reason, Apple could’ve pulled the switch off years earlier.
As far as the GHz goes, you do realize that the lower the GHz (while maintaining performance), the better, right? Intel has been adding multi-cores, reducing die sizes, and integrating components to their chipsets.
Trying to increase performance by increasing GHz results in increased heat, noise and power consumption.
Take a look at Sandy Bridge and next year’s Ivy Bridge and compare the performance and efficiency on a curve and you’ll see it’s not only growing, but accelerating since the PowerPC days.
…”Trying to increase performance by increasing GHz results in increased heat, noise and power consumption.”…
Exactly why the Pentium 4 doubled as a space heater!
Ask Michael Eisner what happens when you piss Steve Jobs off. 😉
I don’t think that I’ve ever seen the word “Noteworthily” ever used. It’s a good thing. I didn’t think I was going to have anything to write into my diary tonight.