The Apple iPhone 6S features two different A9 Chips, not surprisingly.
According to a recent teardown of the iPhone 6S, at the hands of ChipWorks, the tech company reveals that the iPhone 6S’s latest A9 CPU comes from two different suppliers.
The news is making the rounds as a shocker, however, based on what we knew since last year through one of Apple’s most credible, and unrestrained, sources, KGI Securities, which let us into a few pointers on what company would eventually be involved in the supply of ARM chips for the iPhone, iPad and the no longer rumored, and very much talked about, iPad Pro.
In Mid-July 2014, we talked about Samsung, once again being the go-to supplier for A-series chips, and how the odds of Taiwan Semiconductors Manufacturing Ltd. (TSMC), weren’t looking extremely good, even as a backup supplier for the A9 chips. The reports came from KGI’s Michael Liu, yet another very reputable source, aside from Ming-Chi Kuo.
As of late, ChipWorks reports that there is indeed two sets of chips being supplied to Apple, one from Samsung, and the other, not surprisingly, from TSMC, which, in spite of the short-term dip in its stock price last year, somehow managed to convince Apple to keep the chip manufacturer on “speed-dial”.
It’s worth noting that the two chips, while equal in processing power, are slightly different in size, the one from Samsung (APL0898) sized at 96mm, while TSMC (APL1022) is 104.5mm.
What about the iPad Pro?
We have yet to see a teardown of the iPad Pro revealing similar oddities, however we know it’s coming, although the chances of A9X chip being manufactured by anyone else but Samsung, are extremely slim, at least so far.
Word of TSMC working on a 16nm chip, have been circulating since last summer, around the same time as we heard of Apple’s talking to suppliers for the A9 processor, and there are sources claiming that TSMC could engineer chips that could be advanced enough to power the iPad Pro and other devices as well. Having said that, Samsung isn’t likely to lose an hour of sleep over TMSC, considering that it currently provides advanced CPUs for Apple, as well as Qualcomm.