CNET: Apple to move A6X production from Samsung to TSMC

[Idontcare]

Apple to move A6X production from Samsung to TSMC

The company is reportedly looking to initiate trial production at TSMC this quarter for the A6X processor found in the fourth-gen iPad.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-5...e-a6x-production-from-samsung-to-tsmc-report/

:whiste:

What isn't clear to me is whether this really means anything to the end-user.

It obviously becomes one more distraction for TSMC's planning teams, an Apple account is going to get more attention than AMD's existing account for example, so net-net this might actually be a negative for the PC enthusiast market that depends on Nvidia and AMD to be the recipient of TSMC's devoted engineering teams.

 

[grimpr]

Sounds like bad news for the pc world. I always considered Apple, the bane and curse of the pc world.

 

[notty22]

It may result in a infusion of contracts/money that will make TSMC 'better'.

In a move to get away from Samsung. While publicly they battle.

 

[MisterMac]

Maybe it will make TSMC Better.

....or it will kill one of the following's supply line:

AMD GPU's
Nvidia
Qualcomm


So who's betting?!


IDC: Do you think anyone can match Samsung's agility to switch between Speed,Price or Quality - in the requirements a customer like Apple has?

 

[Fjodor2001]

....or it will kill one of the following's supply line:

AMD GPU's
Nvidia
Qualcomm

Maybe they can switch from TSMC to Samsung, now that Samsung will get a lot of spare capacity...

Seems like Samsung only has two fabs though:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_semiconductor_fabrication_plants

 

[postmortemIA]

I remember nvidia's problem with GeForce 8M chips dying because of overheating. It was a process issue. So perhaps Apple is unnecessary opening another can of worms. You can't completely shut down your competition from your supply chain. You better work with them where it makes sense.
Really there's no short term benefit here to Apple. This will divulge their resources to again solve already solved problem. Just like they did with Apple Maps. And end result was bad.

 

[Idontcare]

IDC: Do you think anyone can match Samsung's agility to switch between Speed,Price or Quality - in the requirements a customer like Apple has?

Its not clear that Samsung is really giving Apple much choice.

Regardless what Samsung's foundries might bring to the table, Samsung's lawyers are bringing far too much baggage into the negotiating room at the same time.

No such "conflict of interest" when choosing TSMC as your foundry.

TSMC's capex is nearly rivaling that of Intel, they are building for Apple like crazy. Truly flat-out sprint speed that no one in this industry has ever seen before. The supplier eco-system is loving it, everyone is trying to get qualified to be a TSMC vendor right now.

I feel sorry for samsung's foundry engineers and management, they had no say in the matter in regards to what Samsung's handset team opted to design (borrowed, inspired-by, or otherwise eerily similar to the roadmap designs Apple had to share with the foundry engineers to get power/performance specs in place for the process node itself) and then who's lawyers opted to pursue legal action.

Handset team will get bonuses, lawyers will get bonuses, the foundry team will get idled and laid off to scale down capacity to match the foundry marketshare losses that are coming down the pipe

But TSMC will definitely consolidate their hold on the foundry market. Who knows how well it will trickle down though. Nvidia and AMD have got to be rather small accounts at that point though, considering Qualcomm and Apple volumes.

 

[itsmydamnation]

the thing about AMD and NV is they transtion to nodes much quicker and the time to market for a GPU compared to a full SOC with built in base band if far shorter. So as long as TSMC scale capacity correctly, it should work out even to better for AMD and NV.

 

[Homeles]

Sounds like bad news for the pc world. I always considered Apple, the bane and curse of the pc world.

Apple's the savior of the PC world. So much good has come from their endeavors. Unfortunately as of late, a lot of lawsuits too.

Although you're likely talking about the desktop PC world (which you should have specified), in which case they're definitely not.

 

[Exophase]

If Samsung loses Apple volume partially or entirely I feel like they'll push their own SoCs more aggressively to try to fill the void. I've always gotten the impression that Exynos has been somewhat capacity constrained, showing up in little more than a fraction of Samsung's mobile devices.

Samsung is currently the only SoC vendor aside from Intel that both designs and manufacturers the parts, although they don't own as much of the IP, and I think they'll continue to leverage this advantage in time to market.

 

[dma0991]

Sounds like bad news for the pc world. I always considered Apple, the bane and curse of the pc world.

I couldn't imagine how stagnant the PC world would be without Apple to give it some competition. Just as tablets and MBP are pressuring PCs to buck up on certain aspects. When was the last time laptops had a good screen? Nobody really cared about aesthetic appeal, how thin and light a laptop should be till Apple came out with the MBA and Intel choose to model Ultrabooks based on it.

I'm well aware of Apple's bad side of patent trolling etc, but this does not mean that they've not done some good to the PC world by giving it some competition.

 

[Homeles]

Samsung also has a carrot to dangle in front of Qualcomm now, no?

 

[Idontcare]

Samsung also has a carrot to dangle in front of Qualcomm now, no?

No way Qualcomm is dumb enough to go share any kind of competitive information with Samsung given what they just witnessed Apple going through.

Foundry work requires ~4yrs of collaboration between foundry and design house. The foundry learns a great deal in the process in terms of what the design house plans to be fielding in 4yrs time - roadmaps, feature set, capability, limitations, etc.

There is a huge conflict of interest at Samsung right now, and while general assurances are given that "IP firewalls" are in place that protect the foundry customer's plans and IP from the other divisions of Samsung, it is clear from what happened with Apple (and continues to happen with Apple) that those firewalls are rather leaky :sneaky:

 

[Idontcare]

If Samsung loses Apple volume partially or entirely I feel like they'll push their own SoCs more aggressively to try to fill the void. I've always gotten the impression that Exynos has been somewhat capacity constrained, showing up in little more than a fraction of Samsung's mobile devices.

Samsung is currently the only SoC vendor aside from Intel that both designs and manufacturers the parts, although they don't own as much of the IP, and I think they'll continue to leverage this advantage in time to market.

True, I had not considered this. Samsung may well just plan to swap out apple's wafer orders with their own internal customer wafer orders and never look back. They certainly are in the position to do that, excellent point :thumbsup:

 

[Homeles]

No way Qualcomm is dumb enough to go share any kind of competitive information with Samsung given what they just witnessed Apple going through.

Foundry work requires ~4yrs of collaboration between foundry and design house. The foundry learns a great deal in the process in terms of what the design house plans to be fielding in 4yrs time - roadmaps, feature set, capability, limitations, etc.

There is a huge conflict of interest at Samsung right now, and while general assurances are given that "IP firewalls" are in place that protect the foundry customer's plans and IP from the other divisions of Samsung, it is clear from what happened with Apple (and continues to happen with Apple) that those firewalls are rather leaky :sneaky:

That's something I hadn't thought of. I was always curious if Qualcomm would ever get unhappy enough with TSMC to jump ship to Samsung, but I suppose they'd pick some other foundry if that were ever to happen.

 

[tviceman]

True, I had not considered this. Samsung may well just plan to swap out apple's wafer orders with their own internal customer wafer orders and never look back. They certainly are in the position to do that, excellent point :thumbsup:

Samsung has also showed a willingness to use a competitor's chip when deemed appropriate. (Tegra 2 in first galaxy tab, snapdragon in U.S. GS3, etc.) There was also reports about a year ago that nvidia taped out test wafers with a tegra design at Samsung, and now with the very recent news of Samsung prepping 14 nm nodes, if they lose apple they will surely be trying very hard to find customers to fill that huge gap.

Also, how much time and work would be required to move a chip design to a different fab? If the A6X is near ready for imminent production at tsmc, how long has apple been working with tsmc and will there be enough capacity?

 

[Dadofamunky]

Sounds like bad news for the pc world. I always considered Apple, the bane and curse of the pc world.

Thanks for the helpful contribution.

 

[meloz]

This will be good for consumers.

If Apple go to TSMC, Samsung will be left with a lot of foundry capacity. Samsung will have no option but to get even more aggressive about their own chips (ARM) and linux / Android in general.

They will have to come up with even more compelling chips, SoCs and products which consumers will want in large enough numbers to keep their foundries occupied. Or else Samsung will have to reduce prices of their products to increase demand.

 

[Centauri]

I always considered Apple, the bane and curse of the pc world.

...WTF?

 

[grkM3]

This will be good for consumers.

If Apple go to TSMC, Samsung will be left with a lot of foundry capacity. Samsung will have no option but to get even more aggressive about their own chips (ARM) and linux / Android in general.

They will have to come up with even more compelling chips, SoCs and products which consumers will want in large enough numbers to keep their foundries occupied. Or else Samsung will have to reduce prices of their products to increase demand.

you do know that Samsung has the fastest arm15 soc out right?nothing can even come close to there exynos 5 soc and now that apple is gone they can actually build it for there own phones like the gs4 next year instead of using a competitors s4 soc because they had to build apple a crap load of a6 socs and had to out source there own soc for the us market gs3

 

[Idontcare]

...how long has apple been working with tsmc and will there be enough capacity?

What is the timestamp of the first Samsung/Apple lawsuit?

 

[meloz]

What is the timestamp of the first Samsung/Apple lawsuit?

And how long until Apple sue TSMC?

 

[Aikouka]

If Samsung loses Apple volume partially or entirely I feel like they'll push their own SoCs more aggressively to try to fill the void. I've always gotten the impression that Exynos has been somewhat capacity constrained, showing up in little more than a fraction of Samsung's mobile devices.

It sounds like you're assuming that the Galaxy S3 uses the Snapdragon S4 because of supply constraint, but I recall reading articles that state it was so Samsung could use Qualcomm's LTE radio.

This article on the lack of LTE in the iPhone 4S somewhat covers it:
http://www.anandtech.com/Show/Index...&slug=why-no-lte-iphone-5-blame-28nm-maturity

The Galaxy S3 was released in June in the United States, which most likely would have been way too late to include the 9615 in the S3. The 9615 is what Apple uses in the iPhone 5 as seen on iFixIt:
http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/iPhone+5+Teardown/10525/3

 

[dagamer34]

If Samsung loses Apple volume partially or entirely I feel like they'll push their own SoCs more aggressively to try to fill the void. I've always gotten the impression that Exynos has been somewhat capacity constrained, showing up in little more than a fraction of Samsung's mobile devices.

Samsung is currently the only SoC vendor aside from Intel that both designs and manufacturers the parts, although they don't own as much of the IP, and I think they'll continue to leverage this advantage in time to market.

It's much more likely that Samsung Mobile considers the Exynos their "secret sauce" and isn't willing to part with it to any of their major US competitors (it has popped up in the Meizu MX Quad-Core, so I don't think it's a supply issue).

Much like how Intel isn't just going to give ARM licensees the ability to manufacture ARM chips at its fabs, I don't expect Samsung to just give Exynos to anyone.

 

[MisterMac]

Someone at Samsung must be confident that the machine whale that is Samsung - can use all the foundry for internal projects atleast.

It almost seems to me like the overall tone is:
"Apple is suing us!"
"Oh good - we can dump them from our fabs - by deliberate price hikes until they leave".

I kind of imagine that the deals NVidia\Qualcomm get at TSMC aren't as good as the ones Apple got at Samsung.