AMD is apparently working on two Apple M1 competitor chips
The Santa Clara, California-headquartered semiconductor company apparently has two Apple M1 competitor chips in prototype stages that are reportedly “almost ready”.
Semiconductors
TSMC may build A15 chips for 2021 iPhones, Macs using its next-gen 5nm+ and 4nm process
TSMC’s 5nm+ process technology (aka N5P) is a performance-enhanced version of its 5nm process that’s used to fabricate the current Apple A14 and M1 chips.
Here’s why the baseline $999 MacBook Air comes with seven GPU cores instead of eight
Apple is simply using chip binning, which is a common industry practice designed to salvage some weaker chips by disabling one or more cores.
Apple is reportedly already developing A15 chips for iPhone 13, iMacs, MacBooks & more
Modified versions of this custom chip are expected to power Apple’s second-generation iMac and MacBook computers.
Apple seeks tax breaks from the US government to support domestic chip production
The alleged move is the strongest indication to date that the iPhone maker is keen to move more of its supply chain to the United States.
Bad quality assurance of Skylake reportedly accelerated Apple’s plans to ditch Intel
Quality assurance for the Skylake chip was “abnormally bad”, apparently hastening Apple’s plan to start using its own in-custom chips in Macs.
5nm A14 chips for this year’s iPhones will reportedly enter production in the second quarter
According to DigiTimes, TSMC will remain Apple’s sole foundry partner for the chips that will power the upcoming iPhone and iPad models to be released later this year.
Intel’s new 10nm Ice Lake chips may significantly speed up video compression, encoding and decoding on 2020 Mac notebooks
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.
Kuo: Apple could complete 5G modem development by 2022 or 2023
Apple could do without Qualcomm’s wireless modems in iPhones as soon as 2022, a reliable analyst has it.
Chipmaker Broadcom extends its supply deal with Apple for another two years
Broadcom today announced a renewal of its supply deal with Apple for another two years.
A unique look at how Apple is testing its own iPhone processors against hacking
Here’s a fascinating insight into the great lengths Apple goes in order to keep your iPhone data private, including spending big bucks on custom silicon development, and special labs on its campus filled with pricey equipment used to test its chips against hacking before they’re released in the wild.
An in-depth look into Apple’s frustrations with Intel’s modems
In an in-depth report detailing Intel’s modem struggles, The Information claims Apple is not expected to finalize its own in-house designed cellular modem for iPhones before 2025.
