The iPhone 17 series has already entered the conversation before the launch of the iPhone 16 series. The iPhone 17 series was previously expected to come with a 2nm chipset fabricated by TSMC. While this could be great news for the iPhone 17 series this is reportedly not possible due to technological limitations.
The 2nm chips won’t be ready for mass production till the end of 2025
The news comes from Weibo tipster “Mobile chip expert” (translated), who claims that the 2nm chips won’t be ready for mass production till the end of 2025. The tipster further mentioned that the 2nm chips won’t be available until the iPhone 18 series. So it means that the iPhone 17 series will continue to use TSMC’s 3nm process node.
TSMC plans to start mass production of 2-nanometer chips next year, but multiple Taiwanese media reported that the company is accelerating the process to ensure stable output for mass production. Not to mention, Apple is a major customer of the contract manufacturer. The company occupies a significant production capacity of TSMC’s latest process nodes for Apple Silicon and smartphone chips. For example, in 2023, Apple received all of TSMC’s 3-nanometer chips for the production of iPhones, iPads, and Macs.
TSMC’s 2nm process node is expected to provide a 10% to 15% speed increase at the same power consumption, or a 25% to 30% reduction in power consumption at the same speed as compared to the chips fabricated in the company’s 3nm process.
The current A17 Pro chip (that powers the iPhone 15 Pro models) is fabricated on the company’s first generation 3nm process. In contrast, the more recent M4 chip (that powers the 2024 iPad Pro) is built using a second-generation 3-nanometer process node.
Speaking of the iPhone 16 series, code in iOS 18 has confirmed that all four models will use the next-generation A18 chip based on the second-generation 3-nanometer process. This is a shift from the past few generations, where Apple used the last generation’s chip in the non-Pro models of the successor.
(Source)
Comments