Apple has used both Samsung and TSMC for its chips in the past. Until the A7 it was Samsung, A8 was TSMC, and the A9 was dual-sourced by both! Apple is used to switching between suppliers fairly often for a tech company; it's not that it's too hard for them to switch fab, it's that TSMC is the only competitive fab right now.
There are rumours that Intel might have won some business from them in 2 years. I could totally see Apple turning to Intel for the Mac chips, since they're much lower volume. I know it sounds crazy, we just got rid of Intel, but I'm talking using Intel as a fab, not going back to x86. Those are done.
But wasn't the reason they split with Samsung because they copied the iphone in the perspective of Jobs (to which he reacted with thermonuclear threats)?
They did had the expertise building it after all. What would happen, if TSMC now would build a M1 clone? I doubt this is a way anyone wants to go, but it seems a implied threat to me that is calculated in.
Job's thermonuclear threats were about Android & Google, not Samsung because Schmidt was on Apple's board during the development of Android.
> "I will spend my last dying breath if I need to, and I will spend every penny of Apple’s $40 billion in the bank, to right this wrong. I’m going to destroy Android, because it’s a stolen product. I’m willing to go thermonuclear war on this."
The falling out with Samsung was related, but more about the physical look of the phone
> So, Schmidt had inside knowledge of before following Apple into the smartphone category?
That's the theory/assumption. Android started as an OS for blackberry-style phones with physical keyboard, non touch screens.
Almost as soon as the iPhone launch, Schmidt left the board, and Android pivoted to a multi-touch interface almost immediately, and a year later the HTC Dream came out.
I don't think anyone has any real proof of wrongdoing but the timing is certainly suspicious
If Samsung (or any other fab) were to make Apple chips they wouldn’t learn anything that a good microscope couldn’t already tell them.
Samsung still makes the displays and the cameras for most iPhones. They continued to do business even while engaged in legal action. That they are still competitors wont stop them doing business when it suits them. Business doesn’t care about pride or loyalty; only money.
I believe just locking at a chip, does not enable you to to make such a chip, otherwise china would not be behind.
TSMC already makes them in their labs. They could tweak a few things, claim it is novel and just sell to the competition. (Apple would fight back of course with all they have and TSMC reputation would take damage)
Looking at a chip makes it easier, but it is still millions (or billions in the case of a CPU) of dollars for engineers to figure it all out. That doesn't get you to understand what was done or why so 2-3 years latter you can make that chip but they have now moved on to a faster/better version and you are behind. And of course if you try this Apple (or whoever you copy) will have plenty of engineers who can look at your chip and in just a few hours decide there is enough to have lawyers sue you for the copy.
China already has plenty of engineers who can make a chip, and experience with making CPUs. ARM licenses a lot of useful things for making a CPU (I don't know what). They would be better off in the long run making the chips they all ready understand better. Which is something they are doing. It takes longer and costs more, but because they understand they can also customize the next chip for something they think is good - if they are right they can be ahead of everyone else.
What China is lacking is the fabs to make a CPU. They have made good progress in building them, but there is a lot of technology that isn't in the chip that is needed to make a chip.
It took cerebras less than a billion to get to where they are now, CPUs are not that hard. You would probably be able to reverse engineer them for ~100 million
Doesn't seem likely, TBH. Nevermind the legal agreements they would be violating, TSMC fabs Qualcomm's Snapdragon line of ARM processors. The M1 is good, but not that good (it's a couple generations old by this point, for one). Samsung had a phone line of their own to put it in as well. TSMC does not.
At the end of the month, laptops with Intel's latest processors will start shipping. These use Intel's 18A process for the CPU chiplet. That makes Intel the first fab to ship a process using backside power delivery. There's no third party testing yet to verify if Intel is still far behind TSMC when power, performance and die size are all considered, but Intel is definitely making progress, and their execs have been promising more for the future, such as their 14A process.
>Apple has used both Samsung and TSMC for its chips in the past. Until the A7 it was Samsung, A8 was TSMC, and the A9 was dual-sourced by both! Apple is used to switching between suppliers fairly often for a tech company; it's not that it's too hard for them to switch fab, it's that TSMC is the only competitive fab right now.
This is false. Samsung competes with Apple on smartphones. Apple even filed a lawsuit against Samsung over smartphones.
Apple moved to TSMC because how can you trust someone to make chips for you containing your phone's core IP?
>I could totally see Apple turning to Intel for the Mac chips
I could totally see Apple will be wary turning their core IPs to Intel
TSMC holds the real power. Apple’s stability and Nvidia’s cash both matter but AI demand is distorting the entire semiconductor ecosystem. There are no easy exits. Building fabs, switching suppliers or waiting out the cycle all carry massive risk.
In the long run, competition (where via Intel, Samsung or geopolitical diversification) is the only path that benefits anyone other than TSMC
Trust comes first. That's why TSMC is a pure play fab. Unless there's something that can 100% guarantee protection for fabless players like Apple, no one will trust Samsung or Intel.
Fabless players' IPs are their entire business.
It'll be hard to trust Intel given Intel's past behavior, especially against AMD.
Anyone making a claim that trust will be 0% based on a single thing is obviously oversimplifying the situation. Trust is built on behavior, reputation, time, repeatability, etc.
Trust is subjective and relative.
If Alice doesn’t trust Eve, that doesn’t automatically mean that Bob doesn’t trust Eve. That usually requires both Alice and Bob to similar experiences or Bob must have a trust relationship with Alice.
Trust also changes over time. One CEO change and a company can change overnight thus causing all trust to evaporate. Normally CEOs are aware of this and don't change things and so trust transfers, but one mistake and you lose trust. It takes a lot to build back trust, but a few years of proving worthy of trust and it starts to come back. If your competitors violates trust in the mean time customers are more likely to risk you, and if you prove trustworthy the customers are likely to stay.
There are other factors than trust as well - the US government really wants intel fabs to take off and they may be applying pressure that we are not aware of. It could well be that Apple is willing to risk Intel because the US government will buy a lot of macs/iphones but only if they CPU is made in the US. (this would be a smart thing for the US todo for geopolitical reasons)
Does Apple spend R&D on iPhone screens like they do Apple Silicon? What's that got to do with what we're talking about regarding iPhone's core IP (Apple's own chip, the most important IP from Apple)?
> Does Apple spend R&D on iPhone screens like they do Apple Silicon
yes
> What's that got to do with what we're talking about regarding iPhone's core IP
The iPhone's core IP is iOS.
Collaboration on display and camera development leak major future milestones. Far more consumers care about cameras and displays than the CPU. Just like the camera and display the CPU IP is also protected by patents.
Does Apple spend R&D on iPhone screens like they do Apple Silicon? What's that got to do with what we're talking about regarding iPhone's core IP (Apple's own chip, the most important IP from Apple)?
There are rumours that Intel might have won some business from them in 2 years. I could totally see Apple turning to Intel for the Mac chips, since they're much lower volume. I know it sounds crazy, we just got rid of Intel, but I'm talking using Intel as a fab, not going back to x86. Those are done.