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Apple Renews Contract With Samsung Over A-Series Processors
tlhIngan writes "In an interesting move since Apple decided to partner with TSMC a few weeks ago, the Korea Economic Daily is reporting that Apple has re-signed a contract with Samsung to produce the A-series chips Apple uses to power its iPads, iPhones and iPods. TSMC is still to produce chips for Apple, though Samsung is poised to take over from 2015."
Apple knows which side of the iPad the butter goes.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Eventually will have Apple right where they want them.. Out of the way..
so far:
TSMC to make Apple chips
GlobalFoundries to make Apple chips
Apple to buy it's own foundry
and now Samsung to make Apple chips
http://semiaccurate.com/2013/07/12/apple-has-their-own-fab/
Take it with a pinch of salt
Apple could do it, but it's a very expensive bet.
TSMC spent $9.4 billion on their latest 300mm fab, and it will be running pretty much 24/7/365 for many, many years. And if Apple broke ground tomorrow, it's still likely to be 3 years before the fab is fully built, equipped, staffed, qualified, and running at full speed. Unless Apple is sure it can get chip volume high enough to achieve real cost savings, it's probably not worth doing.
And by then the industry might have started transitioning to 450mm.
Apple is one of the few companies in the world who could drop that much out of actual cash-on-hand without blinking, but it's a very risky bet with potentially a lot more risk than reward.
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
Whatever is beyond that paywall is completely irrelevant to iphone/ipad chips. There is no way Apple could have bought something that had (1) the level of cutting edge process implementation required and (2) the capacity to provide enough volume for their sales. At best, they'll be able to prototype in-house and experiment with processor designs. Or perhaps make processors for some of the low-volume products they sell (airplay?)
Apple will never go for a full-featured foundry play, that is including node tech research and high enough volume for their needs. Even going for a double-digit percentage of their needs is going to be more of a hardware play than they'll ever want to be caught doing. There simply isn't enough margin in that for Apple - far better let someone else eat the risks of R&D and just play the suppliers against each other to lower prices.
Besides, Charlie seems to have kind of lost the plot lately. A pity, that is. Strong, the lure of the dark side is.
I lost the plot? Darn now what am I going to do this evening? :(
-Charlie
Stop and think about this.
1) When was the last time Apple leaked plans like this?
2) The level of detail is too high for a 2015 part
3) Apple never gives the foundry product names
4) They also never specify time frames even to their foundry that far out.
5) Apple and Samsung are not on good terms.
6-17) See 5)
18) Apple is trying to get away from Samsung, cost is not an issue
19) Samsung is not any better than the other two common platform partners for tech.
20) Apple has signed with TSMC for 20nm
21) Losing Apple is a big deal for Samsung Semi, and enough of a big deal to be unpleasant for their stock
22) The source for the story is a Korean newspaper that is likely quite beholden to Samsung
You can draw your own conclusions from the above, mine is damage control on Samsung's part.
-Charlie
Excalibur to make apple chips:
http://www.excaliburdehydrator.com/dehydrators
Spook the troops in Nam?
Apple and Samsung both stand to make money off of this. Why wouldn't they do it? Because separate divisions are fighting legal battles? Let something like that get in the way of making money?
The rumor (depending on who you heard it from) is that Apple...
- is in negotiations to buy UMC outright
- is going to be a Fab investment partner in Chartered Semi or Global Foundaries (both are owned by Abu Dhabi's Advanced Technology Investment Co.)
Any of these options would give them a reasonably cutting edge process and the capacity to provide the chips they need. The advantage of Global is that it is a member of the same common platform group as Samsung and IBM. Since Apple already fabs at Samsung, it's quite possible that they can easily port over all their custom ARM cpu designs to Global Foundaries co-owned Fab and tape out SOCs based on one CPU design. The added benefit of using Global Foundaries would be that it would allow them to avoid tipping off Samsung about how many wafers they are running or when they are taping out or what frequency their CPU runs at with what yield... Global is also looking for a partner to help build-out a monster $10B fab in upstate NY. I'm sure they are courting Apple big-time...
Of course, this rumor might be total BS, but at least it makes a modicum of sense...
Apple: Rounded corners, square design! You loose sucka! Pay!
Samsung: *m-ok* here, have $450M.
Apple: Muahahaha!! *twirling mustache*
(1 year later in Apple board room....)
Engineer: It's a new design. More cores, cache and video on die.
Exec: Great! Send those plans to TI!
Engineer: Uh... it's not something they can do
Exec: But we are investing in America! Get TI on the phone!
TI: The design is outside the capabilities of our manufacturing limits.
Exec: *m-ok* get Samsung on the phone...
Samsung: Muahahahaha! *twirling mustache*
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
I think Apple and Samsung are putting on a bullshit show while colluding behind the scene.
FTC should look into it.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
This just in! Latest Apple rumor reported as fact, and it appears to contradict previous Apple rumor!
Apple doesn't have Samsung's experience in fab, so it stands to reason they'd have a lot more screw ups, making the same mistakes Samsung already made 20-30 years ago.
I think they're going to pull a "Parks and Recs" on them and they'll open up the box of first chips and every one will have "go fuck yourself" etched into it and basically be solid ceramics.
Comic books don't interest me but I would not mind seeing some sort of hero team-up where companies like Samsung, Apple, Google, Nokia, even Microsoft, all used their powers together to make the world a better place instead of spending a lot of their time in communal battle, either actual, in courts, or in the minds of the rabid customer base.
It will never happen because shareholders would freak, and because competition spurs innovation. But it should not be inherently wrong for Apple to source parts from Samsung and allow the best apps Google can offer for iOs. The people who lose out when the territorial walls go up are in fact the customers.
On a broader level, the future of the human race may eventually depend upon companies and even countries putting aside differences to work together toward common goals, and it seems to me that we are generally unaccustomed to and perhaps incapable of that sort of cooperative effort, and as such, we may never inherit the stars because we're too busy suing each other about the patents on the latest space toilet seat.
Sig for hire.
The issue is if it will save them money. It wont.
That is quite frankly utterly irrelevant, even if it cost them 1.5x as much to make each part.
The reason to have your own fab is that then you have a chance at controlling leaks - and you don't give a competitor a chance to copy what you are doing right off the assembly line from original design documents, you have to reverse engineer it like everyone else.
It gives Apple a year +buffer on industrial espionage. That is priceless.
Apple would not just have to build the FAB, but they would also have to sell its service to others in order to make it worthwhile.
You haven't kept track of number of units Apple sells per quarter, have you? Apple can easily consume the output of a custom fab facility.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
"Samsung Electronics will supply 14 nano A9 chips that will be used for Apple's iPhone 7."
IOW the whole article smells of bullshit.
It's all about the process - nothing more. Apple may have an excellenet design team, but they clearly don't have the necessary "process" folks. So they relied on Samsung, which does spend $$Billions on R&D for the IC process (fabrication) technology. Taking it from the labs to full scale production can take YEARS! Intel is the current leader @ 22 nm - TSMC is still having issues around 28nm. GF is also at 28nm, as is the most of the rest of the industry.
There are very few companies that actually do "research" into IC fabrication: Intel, IBM (w/GF Partners), Samsung - not many more. . . Besides being expensive to do all the research for the next node level, you then have to justify the expense of building the new plants to handle this. All very expensive.
Apple may reach agreements for "preferred" status when it comes to wafer starts. But they are thinking ahead 3-5 years here and where they want to be with their designs. 14-10 nm is the next node bump - haven't heard much about sub 10 nm that's anywhere close to reality. Until then, Apple will put there $$ where they can get the best return and will focus on what they do best: Making outstanding products.
You do realize that the UMC rumor came from the Mac sites who all wrote me asking for free access to essentially republish my work openly. Before I could even respond they flat out made up that I was saying it was UMC, which I did not do. They got this flash of inspiration from the metatags my editor put in. For some reason they picked out UMC and ignored the five other fabs in the tag list. Could it be that UMC was the last one? Did they miss that the tags get alphabetized by the system? Are they that ignorant? Don't answer the last one.
Short story is that the morons at the Mac sites flat out made up the UMC thing and attributed it to me. That is modern 'journalism' for you.
-Charlie
You seem to have utterly missed my point that money does not matter, this is about control.
You seem to be ignorant as to what Apple would do with chips produced (as in potentially every product, not just AppleTV's).
You seem to be dumb enough to think that Apple wouldn't upgrade the FAB over time...
Basically, you just aren't thinking.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley