Chips

Rumor: The next Apple TV and HomePod mini to double as UWB base stations

Christian Zibreg ∙ October 12, 2020

According to a prominent leaker, the next Apple TV and a smaller $99 HomePod model will double as ultra-wide band (UWB) base stations capable of tracking the user's location as they walk around the house. This is going to require Apple's A1 chip for spatial awareness that will allegedly be built into the next Apple TV and the HomePod mini. In addition, the feature will require an U1-enabled device like one of the iPhone 11 or Apple Watch Series 6 models.

Bad quality assurance of Skylake reportedly accelerated Apple’s plans to ditch Intel

Christian Zibreg ∙ June 25, 2020

According to an ex-Intel engineer, bad quality assurance of Intel's Skylake chips has reinforced the notion within Apple that the company should hasten its long-expected switch to its own in-house designed desktop chips based on its custom sic lion in iOS devices.

TSMC’s upcoming $12 billion US semiconductor plant and “Made in USA” iPhones

Christian Zibreg ∙ June 1, 2020

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), the world’s leading chip foundry that counts Apple as its #1 client, is investing a cool $12 billion in a manufacturing plant based in Arizona, its second US facility. Former Apple executive Jean-Louis Gassée in his Monday Note column analyzes the repercussion of the move and potential problems that it may solve.

Bloomberg: First Macs featuring 8-core Apple CPUs built on 5nm process arriving in 2021

Christian Zibreg ∙ April 23, 2020

Bloomberg is reporting that Apple will release first Mac models powered by in-hose designed chips featuring eight CPU cores next year. The chip is believed to be fabricated by the independent semiconductor maker TSMC on its five-nanometer process technology.

Kuo: Apple would pay 40-60% less for the CPU by switching away from Intel

Christian Zibreg ∙ March 27, 2020

Reliable Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo with TF International Securities thinks one of the more important reasons for Apple to ditch Intel processors in its Mac computers is price.

2020 iPad Pro’s A12Z chip could be a rebadged A12X that enables a previously latent GPU core

Christian Zibreg ∙ March 27, 2020

Apple's A12Z Bionic chip that debuted in the new iPad Pro last week is probably a rebranded A12X Bionic processor from 2018 that activates a previously disabled graphics core.

Former iPhone GPU supplier Imagination signs a new license agreement with Apple

Christian Zibreg ∙ January 2, 2020

Imagination Technologies, a UK-based fabless chip designer, announced today that it has signed a new license agreement with Apple which will permit the Cupertino technology giant to use Imagination's intellectual property in its own designs in exchange for license fees.

5nm A14 chips for this year’s iPhones will reportedly enter production in the second quarter

Christian Zibreg ∙ January 2, 2020

Apple's next-generation mobile processor that will power this year's iPhone and iPad models, tentatively named "A14 Bionic", will reportedly enter mass production in the second quarter of this year, in time for new iPhones in September.

iOS 13.1.3 issues with Apple’s U1 chip are causing AirDrop on some iPhone 11 units to fail

Christian Zibreg ∙ October 21, 2019

iOS 13.0 arrived with plenty of issues so Apple quickly followed up with four rushed bug-fix updates. The latest iOS 13.1.3 update seems to hit owners of the latest iPhones pretty hard.

Apple’s own 5G modem may reportedly start appearing in iPhones beginning 2022 or 2023

Christian Zibreg ∙ October 11, 2019

Cellular modem development is a tremendously complicated, expensive and time-consuming process, but that hasn't stopped Apple, which already designs a bunch of chips in-house, to set an aggressive 2022 timeline for iPhones outfitted with its own 5G baseband hardware.

iPhone XS smacks iPhone 11 Pro in app launching speed test

Anthony Bouchard ∙ September 22, 2019

Apple’s annual iPhone unveiling typically includes the introduction of an all-new SoC with modest speed improvements, with this year’s focus being the A13 Bionic chip. At the Keynote, Apple’s vice president of silicon manufacturing Sri Santhanam said that all mechanisms of the A13 Bionic chip would be nearly 20% faster than its predecessor; but is this the case?

Now that the iPhone 11 Pro is readily available to those who pre-ordered or tried their luck at local retail stores, it should come as no surprise that these numbers are being put to the test. In one example, YouTube personality EverthingApplePro compared the app launching performance of the iPhone 11 Pro to the previous-generation iPhone XS with astonishing results:

Intel’s new 10nm Ice Lake chips may significantly speed up video compression, encoding and decoding on 2020 Mac notebooks

Christian Zibreg ∙ August 2, 2019

Intel yesterday unveiled its tenth-generation processors code-named "Ice Lake" that while bringing only modest compute improvements accelerate tasks such as machine learning, encryption, video compression, encoding and decoding by a large margin.