Although Samsung was the first foundry to produce 3nm chips, outpacing TSMC by a few months, Apple doesn’t seem to have been sufficiently impressed by the Korean tech giant’s efforts. According to reports, the Cupertino company chose TSMC over Samsung to produce its upcoming M3 and A17 Bionic CPUs.
According to reports, Apple will manufacture its upcoming M3 and A17 Bionic CPUs using TSMC’s N3E (3nm) production process. This will be the first move from the 5nm family for the corporation. Apple may save its 3nm chips for the most strong iPhone models scheduled for delivery the following year while employing the A16 Bionic for less expensive devices.
Apple’s latest M1 and M2 chips were never built by Samsung, but the company made the M1 available, and according to industry rumors, the same is true for the M2.
Apple buys various components from other businesses, like Samsung, even though TSMC produces the latest CPUs for Apple. To be precise, FC-BGA (full-chip ball grid array) substrates for the M1 and M2 chips were provided by Samsung Electro-Mechanics. For the production of CPUs and GPUs with a high circuit connection density, FC-BGAs are necessary.
According to earlier estimates, Samsung invested $933 million, or 1.3 trillion won, to construct FC-BGA plants in Vietnam. Given this, it’s possible that Samsung will still be engaged in the production of Apple’s future chipsets, at least in the sense of supplying Apple and TSMC with certain parts. However, it appears that Apple will only use TSMC’s 3nm production lines, which means that compared to its main chipset rival, Samsung, Samsung will play a much smaller part in Apple’s fight strategy.
Source: Sammobile
