Because we went through this all past year , with Samsung and TSMC both named at different times as Apple’s exclusive manufacturer for the A9, only for reports to eventually reveal that they were sharing the job.
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New reports online are saying that Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) is the company that will be supplying Apple’s next-generation A10 processors.
The iPhone 6s is already selling better than last year’s model, with Apple having already confirmed that first weekend sales are on pace to top 10 million. Now, according to a new rumor, the next-gen Apple A10 application processor will be exclusively manufactured by TSMC on a 16 nm manufacturing process, using InFO architecture.
TSMC will offer its in-house developed backend integrated fan-out wafer-level packaging (InFO-WLP) for the production of the A10 chips. This is not surprising considering that Apple has been releasing variants every year since the launch of the iPhone 4.
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As always, any rumor stating that TSMC will be the victor of Apple’s chip business will be challenged and/or countered by future claims made by analysts favoring Samsung. TSMC is also expected to start ordering more parts for the iPhone 7 in the second quarter of 2016. The smaller the process, the more transistors can be fitted into the same space. While the South Korean company will surely make great advances in manufacturing processes, TSMC will have to lag behind until it makes Apple happy.
