Apple’s A17 Bionic SoC is expected to be the company’s first 3nm chip which will offer major performance and efficiency improvements over the 5nm fabrication used for the last three generations of Apple’s A-series chips.
Hartley Charlton for MacRumors:
The initial version of the A17 Bionic chip will reportedly be manufactured using TSMC’s N3B process, but Apple is planning to switch the A17 over to N3E sometime next year. The move is said to be a cost-cutting measure that could come at the expense of reduced efficiency.
N3B is TSMC’s original 3nm node created in partnership with Apple. N3E, on the other hand, is the simpler, more accessible node that most other TSMC clients will use. N3E has fewer EUV layers and lower transistor density than N3B, resulting in efficiency tradeoffs, but the process can provide better performance. N3B has also been ready for mass production for some time longer than N3E, but it has much lower yield.
It may be the case that Apple is using the N3B CPU and GPU core design originally designed for the A16 Bionic for the initial A17 chips, before switching to the original A17 designs with N3E later in 2024. This architecture will presumably be iterated on through TSMC’s successor nodes for chips like the “A18” and “A19.”
It seems highly unlikely that Apple would make such a drastic change to the A17 Bionic during the product cycle of the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max, so the N3E version of the chip may instead be destined for next year’s standard iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Plus models.
MacDailyNews Take: The gulf between Apple and the iPhone knockoff peddlers will soon yawn even wider. Nearly 90% of TSMC’s 3nm chip fabrication capacity has reportedly been booked by Apple for new iPhones, Macs, and iPads for the year.
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