It would seem that Apple has managed to reserve 100% of the production of TSMC N3. Enough to guarantee a good lead for its future iPhone and Mac once morest competitors.
To ensure better performance or better autonomy, it has become crucial for brands to invest massively in the central chip of their products, and its production.
Part of Apple’s dominance in the industry with its Apple M on Mac and Apple A on smartphone chips is in part due to chip manufacturing at TSMC. For the next generation, Apple would have done very well: 100% of TSMC N3 production would be reserved for the Californian manufacturer.
Several months ahead of competitors
It is DigiTimes which reveals that the brand new mass production of 3nm chips launched on February 18 by TSMC would be 100% reserved by Apple. The current generation of chips, Apple 16 Bionic, Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 and Nvidia GeForce RTX 4000, share TSMC’s 4nm production lines.
Does this mean that Qualcomm will have to ignore the manufacture of 3 nm chips for its next generation of Snapdragon? No. Even in the event that Apple has reserved 100% of the production of the TSMC N3, the foundry already has in the boxes a less expensive TSMC N3E process. It is the latter that would be open to more brands including Qualcomm.
In other words, here Apple would above all have paid for a certain peace of mind at great expense. The firm makes sure to have a certain technological lead on PC and mobile and above all an ability to keep up with demand. Indeed, during the presentation of the latest results, Apple indicated that it had not been able to sell as many iPhone 14s as desired due to supply difficulties.
With this time ahead of TSMC N3 technology, Apple will be able to offer a chip that consumes less or obtains more performance for the same architecture and frequency. Enough to regain performance leadership at a time when Qualcomm is doing very well with its Snapdragon 8 Gen 2.
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