Apple and Samsung Already Working On A9 Processor

Posted by samzenpus on Monday December 15, 2014 @05:13AM from the build-it-better dept.

itwbennett writes According to a report in Korean IT Times, Samsung Electronics has begun production of the A9 processor, the next generation ARM-based CPU for iPhone and iPad. Korea IT Times says Samsung has production lines capable of FinFET process production (a cutting-edge design for semiconductors that many other manufacturers, including AMD, IBM and TSMC, are adopting) in Austin, Texas and Giheung, Korea, but production is only taking place in Austin. Samsung invested $3.9 billion in that plant specifically to make chips for Apple. So now Apple can say its CPU is "Made in America."

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Re:Processors take 4-5 years to design. by alen · 2014-12-15 05:39 · Score: 4, Informative

apple and qualcomm are custom designs that run the ARM instruction set. only three other companies in the world have that license. everyone else gets to make the ARM reference design
List of third-party ARM cores by tepples · 2014-12-15 06:35 · Score: 5, Informative

List of third-party implementations of ARM architecture shows Qualcomm Snapdragon (ARMv7), Apple A series (ARMv8), Applied Micro X-Gene (ARMv8), NVIDIA Denver (ARMv8), and Cavium ThunderX (ARMv8). Everything else is ARM's own Cortex reference design.