The production of Apple A11 chip for iPhone 8 was scheduled to kick off in April but faced with yield issues, TSMC which may ultimately be the sole supplier of the 10nm chip for the upcoming iPhone, could not begin production of the chips. However, TSMC has finally officially begun the production of the next generation Apple SoC, set to feature in the iPhone 8 later this year, according to report from Taiwan.

The production process by TSMC was said to have been affected by some issues ranging from the stacking of components in the backend to the integrated fan-out packaging process. However, these setbacks have now been addressed and the company is ready to roll. With respect to performance, Apple’s custom CPU designs are the best in the smartphone industry and as is customary with Apple, they have designed the A11 chip pattern according to their specifications but the fabrication of the components will be done by TSCM. The A11 chip will be used on Apple’s next flagship, the iPhone 8.

Apart from the A11 chip, it is also expected that the new iPhone 8 would incorporate a 5-inch (could be slightly more) OLED display into the same physical case size as a 4.7-inch iPhone 7 with thin chins on the top and bottom edges. This means the device will have smaller bezels allowing the screen to dominate the front face. Other expectations from the iPhone 8 include a dual camera setup (12-megapixel and 7-megapixel sensors), a 3D front camera, better speakers, waterproofing and stainless steel will be used in the production with glass sandwich design. New information suggests that the AirPods will be bundled inside the box.

Read Also: iPhone X Blueprint Leak Reveals Apple A11 CPU, Dual Speakers & Dual Batteries

The commencement of mass production of iPhone 8 is uncertain, but a recent report by security firm KGI claim that it may not start until October or November. Another report has also suggested that the device may not go on sale until October.

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Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) has got a whole lot of orders for its 10nm chip on its hands. The company is said to have received orders from Apple, Huawei’s Hisilicon and Mediatek and recent reports from Taiwan had hinted at a low production rate which could affect the timely delivery of these orders. But in a swift reaction, the company has come out to dismiss that report as false.

This was made known by Elizabeth Sun, senior director of Corporate Communications at TSMC. She hinted that its 10nm chip is on schedule and is projected to contribute to sales revenue for the first time in the first quarter of 2017. She revealed that the company’s 10nm node process will account for about one percent of TSMC’s overall revenue in Q1 2017.

Read More: Helio X30 Will Have Amazing Energy Efficiency & Will Launch in Q2 2017

This, no doubt, should be cheering news for Meizu fans who would now look forward to an early release date for the expected Meizu MX7 which would come with the Helio X30 10nm chip. Huawei is also said to use TSMC’s 10nm process in the production of its Kirin 970 chip which is also expected in Q2 2017.  Apple is also expected  to use the TSMC 10nm node process on its A11 chip and that for now is likely TSMC’s topmost priority at the moment. We are still yet to get official words from Samsung confirming or debunking rumors that its Foundry is experiencing delays in delivering Qualcomm’s orders for its 10nm nodes mean’t for the Snapdragon 835.

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Latest report from Taiwan has emerged to allay fears of a delay in the production of 10nm chip on which Huawei’s Kirin 970 will be built. The report also  hints that the Kirin 970 should enter volume production in the first quarter of next year as scheduled.

We had gotten wind earlier on that TSMC is having problems ramping up production of the 10nm chip a situation that could affect Smartphones scheduled to use the new process. Samsung was also reported to have been experiencing similar ramp-up problems with its 10nm process, prompting Qualcomm to revise its roadmap and scale back the new node technology so that only the Snapdragon 835 series would be made with the new chip. Even at that, early birds like the Samsung S8 and Xiaomi Mi 6 billed for release in February are rumored as doubtful for February launch.

Kirin 970 will be built on TSMC’s 10nm process and is detailed to pack an octa-core CPU comprised of four ARM Cortex-A73 cores, and four ARM Cortex-A53 cores. The next gen flagship chipset is also revealed to have a maximum clock frequency of between 2.8GHz – 3.0GHz. In addition, the Kirin 970 will be equipped with Cat. 12 LTE baseband and would come as Huawei’s first chip to use the 10nm process.

TSMC is the world’s largest contract chipmaker that services a very broad range of customers including Apple. The company is also producing the Apple A11 chip that would be inside the iPhone 8 and that also, it says, is right on schedule with volume production expected to begin in the second quarter of 2017.

Read More: Samsung Galaxy S8 & Xiaomi Mi 6 Could Be Delayed Over Chip Supply Shortage

With the Kirin 970 entering production in the first quarter of 2017, is there a possibility that it could be inside the Huawei P10 expected in Q1 next year? We  don’t know about that right now.

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Smartphone chip makers are always on the move, improving their chipset with more powerful offering and reduced size in the face of demands for smartphones that consume less power and are are capable of seamlessly fast performance. Huawei recently released the Kirin 960 flagship processor that benchmark tests have shown to be superior in performance to its present contemporaries, yet the company is rumored to be working on a Kirin 970 chipset.

According to latest media reports in Taiwan, the next generation Kirin 970 will be Huawei’s first to be built on the TSMC 10nm process. The Kirin 970 is said to likely still be on an octa-core architecture but will integrate a baseband with support for Cat. 12 global LTE. The present Kirin 960 chip is composed of a quad-core Cortex-A73 chip, another quad-core Cortex-A53 chip and an octa-core Mali-G71 GPU. The Kirin 960 was however built on TSMC 16nm process and it comes with a wonderful CPU performance but the GPU cannot perform at full capacity.  So a switch to the 10nm process is said to greatly reduce the heat and allow full extraction of the GPU performance.

Read More: Full Details of Huawei Kirin 960 System-on-Chip

In building the Kirin 970 on the 10nm process, Huawei is following the trend, catching up with would-be early starters like Qualcomm which just announced the Snapdragon 835 processor built on Samsung’s 10nm manufacturing process and to debut in the first quarter of next year on the Galaxy S8. MediaTek is also out with its Helio X30 chip built on TSMC 10nm process and to debut in the first quarter of next year also. MediaTek is also billed to release an Helio X35 chip within the first half of 2017 which would upgrade to provide Cat. 12 LTE band support.

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