TSMC begins making Apple A6 iDevice chips

Taiwanese chip foundry TSMC has started punching out Apple's ARM-based A6 processor. The manufacturer, which specialises in producing silicon on behalf of so-called 'fabless' chip makers - such as Apple and Nvidia - and is the world's biggest such foundry, is initially producing test chips to verify the Apple's designs and its …

[Anonymous Coward]

The Apple

Calling it "The Apple"? Genius! I'll be calling it that myself next time a conversation turns to the apple's products.

Barman? A ration of Duff for Tony Smith!

[Jango]

It's not an easy switch!

I hate in when an article makes one think it's straightforward to move chip production between Fabs that easily!

TSMC, UMC and Common platform (IBM, Samsung and Chartered Semiconductors) all have different reference flows and it's a major change to move from one to the other. From what I've experienced in the EDA industry, each platform has its own pros and cons, however TSMC has been where I have seen production nodes shrink fastest. If they've cleaned out their 22nm process to improve yields, it might prove beneficial for Apple. It's not a simple case of changing fabs cuz they're pretty pissed off at Samsung right now.

[G2]

reuters news late by about 3 WEEKS

the reuters story has been scooped 3 WEEKS ago by Charlie D.

http://semiaccurate.com/2011/06/27/apple-cpus-rolling-off-the-line-at-tsmc/

hint: june 27th

[Arctic fox]

Interesting.

That Apple were more dependent on Samsung's expertise than they are keen on admitting. That Apple will likely be doing more in-house is (from their point of view) a logical move. However, I would love to know what *really* prompted this spat between Apple and Samsung. I do not believe for one moment that some months ago SJ suddenly awoke one morning and send "fuck me, the bastards have ripped off our 3GS". Something else is behind this quarrel, what it might be however completely escapes me.