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Apple is on its way to building their next generation of mobile devices as their order of 7-nanometer processing chips have reportedly entered mass production.
One of Apple’s trusty manufacturers, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC), has started the mass production of the 7-nanometer chips and Apple is reportedly one of their first recipients for the making of the A12 chip, according to a Bloomberg report.
If the A12 chip does adopt the 7-nanometer architecture, it is already a few steps ahead compared to the currently available A11 Fusion chip found on iPhone X and the iPhone 8 series.
Aside from the smaller architecture, the rumored A12 chip is expected to bring much faster performances even when running iOS applications.
While neither Apple nor TSMC agreed to comment on Bloomberg's report, it can be recalled that the production of 7-nanometer chips has already been announced last month. And who pioneered the making of this much smaller mobile processor? No less than TSMC.
After the announcement of the 7-nanometer chip production, TSMC president C. C. Wei told financial analysts in a conference call (via AnandTech), “More than 50 products tape-outs has been planned by end of this year from applications across mobile, server CPU, network processor, gaming, GPU, PGA, cryptocurrency, automotive and AI. Our 7nm is already in volume production.”
Meanwhile, reports also note the importance of having a much more advanced next-generation processing chips considering the stump in smartphone market observed this year. Notably, Apple has always made an effort to create an iPhone chip that would suffice to the demands of a premium smartphone.
However, Engadget commented that Apple might need more than an improved chipset to stand out in the smartphone market. Considering that other major smartphone makers such as Samsung and Huawei also have the capacity to develop their own processors based on the last chip architecture, Apple still has a lot of work to do to keep the iPhone sales up.
