“Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) is expected to tape out Apple’s A7 processor on a 20nm process in March and then move the chip into risk production in May-June, which will pave the way for commercial shipments in the first quarter of 2014, according to industry sources,” Josephine Lien and Steve Shen report for DigiTimes. “TSMC declined to comment on market report.”
Lien and Shen report, “TSMC will utilize 14-fab to manufacture the A7 chips for Apple.”
Read more in the full article here.
Too little, too late. Samsung will win yet again.
You are obviously clueless. If true (which I expect) this means $Billions of lost revenue for Samsung and gained by TSMN.
Really.
DigiTimes = false.
Get this like gravity, the only time they report the accurate truth other than the date is by pure blind luck.
DigiTimes is a piece of crap rag. Now Wall Street will run with this and say no news iPhones or iPads until 2014. Who pays them to write this tripe?
Win what?
The dates seem quite out of step with Apple’s typical introduction plans. If we assume for a moment the article is correct then there will be no new processors for the new iPhone or new iPad this year. I really doubt that this is reality.
Do they need a new processor? My latest iPad and iPhone 5 run so fast I can’t feel any delays anywhere. I probably wouldn’t know the difference if the chip was any faster, would you?
The only reason I can imagine for a new chip would be for some new capabilities such as longer battery life, or something we haven’t thought about. I can’t believe their goal of a new Chip is to compete on performance. Who would know the difference?
SoC, lower power, size and faster speed. At some point, will we not see most of the iOS hardware sitting in just one chip? Yes!
Plus we have no idea what iOS 7 will bring. It may require a faster processor (which I hope isn’t the case. I am not ready to upgrade my iPad yet).
It also doesn’t mean TSMC will be the only provider, or that 20nm is for this year. Perhaps first there will be a 32 or 28nm A7. This has happened before.