DigiTimes on Monday reports that, even in the face of a global chip shortage, Apple is ramping up A15 Bionic chip orders for the new iPhone 13 lineup while reducing equivalent orders for older-generation iPhone models still on the market.
Apple has scaled down its chip orders for older-generation iPhones, while ramping up wafer starts at TSMC for its iPhone 13, the sources said. Apple has also not made any changes to its chip orders placed with TSMC for 2021, the sources noted.
According to today’s report, TSMC is still on track to move its 3nm process technology to volume production in the second half of 2022, with monthly output for the process set to reach 55,000 wafers. TSMC’s 3nm process will reportedly be first adopted for the manufacture of iPhone chips. A previous report from Nikkei Asia claimed Apple will debut the next-generation 3nm chip technology in a 2022 iPad Pro.
The A15 Bionic chip in the iPhone 13 uses a 5nm+ process, which TSMC refers to as N5P, a “performance-enhanced version” of its 5nm process that delivers additional power efficiency and performance improvements. The A16 chip in 2022 iPhones is expected to be manufactured based on TSMC’s future 4nm process.
MacDailyNews Take: When we hit 3nm, even when we go to 4nm next year, battery life is going to be insanely great, especially with ProMotion displays!
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From October 2012 through June 2021, Apple alone spent an astounding $444 billion on buybacks, equal to 87 percent of its net income. That is in addition to another $114 billion paid out as dividends, representing an additional 22 percent of net income, over these eight and three-quarter years. With just a fraction of those funds wasted on buybacks, Apple could have invested directly in a state-of-the-art fab to produce its own chips on U.S. soil.