When Apple releases the new iPhone 15 Pro this fall, it could offer a significant jump in performance and power efficiency over several previous models. This is because of the A17 chip, which will almost certainly use the new 3nm process, which is significantly faster and more efficient than the current 5nm process.
And it may take some time before any other chip gets close to it. According to DigiTimes, Apple will go full 3nm for the iPhone in 2023, reportedly capturing “all initial 3nm shipments” from TSMC. Apple is a priority customer for TSMC, and it pays a premium to get the first money for a new manufacturing process technology – previous reports have said TSMC charges $20,000 per wafer, which typically yields several hundred chips.
It’s not unusual for Apple to capture all or nearly all of the initial shipments of a new process from TSMC. We don’t know how big the “initial delivery” is or how long Apple’s order will last, but as we’ve seen in other years, Apple will almost certainly be the only company with a mass-produced product using this manufacturing technology for several months. .
Apple’s order installs the company’s 3nm A17 Bionic chip in the iPhone 15 Pro, as well as the M3 processor for Mac, which is likely to arrive in late 2023 or early 2024. transistor density is significant and allows the use of ever more powerful processor cores, more cache memory, more All with less power consumption. Thus, we could see performance spikes that exceeded the usual growth from year to year. Apple first moved to 5nm with the A14 chip in the iPhone 12.
The new 3nm A17 Bionic will likely be exclusive to the iPhone 15 Pro, while the iPhone 15 will use the 5nm A16 Bionic, further demarcating professional and non-professional phones. As for the Mac, there’s a chance that Apple could upgrade to the 3nm M3 at the October event. latest reports claim that the first Mac M3s won’t arrive until 2024. We also expect Apple to release a new 15-inch MacBook Air this spring, as well as a new Mac Pro, both of which will likely stick with the 5nm M2 series. chips.
According to TSMC reports, the gains from 3nm chips are bigger than expected. This would be welcome news for iPhone and Mac fans who were somewhat disappointed with the A16 and M2.
Apple isn’t the only company moving to 3nm. Qualcomm and MediaTek will eventually make 3nm chips, but not in time for 2023 Android phones. Intel also plans to move to 3nm, but according to DigiTimes, it will be at least another year before it makes that move.