Apple’s M3, A17 chips will be first to employ TSMC’s cutting-edge 3nm tech

Apple will be the first company to use Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) N3E, an upgraded version of TSMC’s current 3-nanometer (3nm) manufacturing technology. Apple will receive the chips next year in the form of M3s for Macs and iPads, and in the 2023 A17 models of the iPhone Pro, Nikkei Asia reports Wednesday, citing “informed sources on the matter.”

chip

Cheng Ting-Fang for Nikkei Asia:

The A17 mobile processor currently under development will be mass-produced using TSMC’s N3E chip manufacturing technology, which is expected to be available in the second half of next year, according to three people familiar with the matter. The A17 will be used in the premium voice in the iPhone range slated for release in 2023, they said.

N3E is an upgraded version of TSMC’s current 3-nanometer manufacturing technology, which is only starting to be used this year. Apple’s next generation M3 chip for its Mac offerings will also use updated 3-nm technology, two sources added.

N3E will offer better performance and energy efficiency than the first version of the technology, TSMC said at a recent technology symposium in Hsinchu. Industry sources have said that the updated manufacturing technology is also designed to be more cost-effective than its predecessor.

As TSMC’s largest customer and the biggest driver for new semiconductor technologies, Apple is still its most loyal partner when it comes to adopting the latest chip technology. The US tech giant will be the first to use TSMC’s first generation of 3nm technology, using it for some of its upcoming iPads, Nikkei Asia previously reported.

According to [chief analyst with Semianalysis Dylan Patel]According to the estimate, there is a cost increase of at least 40% for the same silicon area when switching to the 3nm chips of the 5nm family, which includes the 4nm chips.

MacDailyNews takes: The so-called “competition” simply cannot compete.

A16 Bionic is the fastest chip ever seen on a smartphone. The competition is still working to catch up with the A13 we first introduced in the iPhone 11 three years ago. The new 6-core CPU is generations ahead. It is up to 40% faster than the competition. The CPU uses our best-in-class fusion architecture that offers both top-notch performance and top-notch efficiency. Our two high-performance cores are faster and consume 20% less power than the A15 Bionic. And most of the daily activities can be handled by our highly efficient cores. At the same level of performance, these new efficiency cores use a third of the power of even the best competitor efficiency cores.

– Greg Joswiak, Apple’s Senior Vice President of Worldwide Marketing, September 7, 2022

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