Apple will be sourcing the new CPU for its iPhone 7 models exclusively from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), according to a new report from The Electronic Times . The two companies reportedly reached a deal based on the Taiwanese company’s manufacturing process for 10nm chips and more advanced designs that provide better performance and efficiency.
Although Apple had been rumoured to be looking for new suppliers for its A9 CPU in the two iPhone 6s models, the company went back to Samsung for at least some of its chips, splitting chip orders between both Samsung and TSMC. This led to a number of reports that the TSMC version of the A9 provided significantly better battery life than the Samsung version in at least some artificial benchmarks, with Apple tacitly acknowledging the difference but noting that it represents a two to three percent variance under real-world usage conditions.
TSMC is expected to begin production of the A10 chip in June, with a ramp-up of its 10nm manufacturing process in the second half of 2016, ramping up to full production in 2017. [via MacRumors]
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