Apple Silicon

Locator: 44858AAPL.
Locator: 44858CHIPS.

Chips, semiconductor: link here.
NPUs: link here.

First post: June 7, 2023. 

Later: added a Bloomberg story from December 16, 2021.

Updates

July 5, 2024: Apple's M5.

May 7, 2024: Wiki has not updated its "transistor count" page and as of this date does not include the M4 chip. Wiki now includes the M4 but it's higher up the list and easily missed.

May 7, 2024: Apple introduces NPUs with the new iPads. NPUs have been around for awhile; Apple has the lead, and is now talking about NPUs. I think this was the first day I've heard NPUs mentioned as "NPUs" and it was Tim Cook.

December 16, 2023: Broadcom. 

December 14, 2023: 1.4 nm chip.

June 30, 2023: first phase, North Carolina facility.

June 8, 2023: Yesterday: my first blog on Apple Silicon, arguably the biggest chip company in the world.

Today, more, from The Verge, dated June 7, 2023. Jon Porter "heard" the same thing I heard during Tim Cook's WWDC keynote speech.

Although it seems like a surefire thing in retrospect, it’s worth taking a moment to reflect on how successful Apple’s switch to Apple Silicon has been. Prior to Apple’s big announcement, Arm-based processors had only really been successful in smartphones. A couple of manufacturers had attempted to make Windows laptops work on Arm (perhaps most notably with the Surface Pro X), but none had delivered on the promises of the architecture without significant compromises.

Apple has not just successfully transitioned its entry-level MacBooks to Arm, where the architecture’s battery life benefits were the biggest appeal, but it also upended our concept of Arm performance for both laptops and desktops. Apple not only ported its own operating system and apps but also convinced major third-party developers to do the same.

The iPhone manufacturer is notorious for its love of control. It controls how people can use its smartphones and which apps they can install. It controls how the repair ecosystem around them works. And with its transition to Apple Silicon, it has an unprecedented amount of control over how it makes its Macs. It doesn’t need to wait for Intel and AMD to release new chips to upgrade its computers or rebuild a relationship with Nvidia. Now, as it starts its next journey, Apple can march to the beat of its own drum.

December 16, 2021: Bloomberg, new office in southern California. 

Original Post

Several times during his 2023 WWDC keynote speech, Tim Cook mentioned "Apple silicon."

What is "Apple silicon"?  Possibly the biggest chip company in the world. 

Conceived, owned, and operated by Apple, Inc.

Link here.

Apple silicon is a series of system on a chip (SoC) and system in a package (SiP) processors designed by Apple Inc., mainly using the ARM architecture. They are the basis of Mac, iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, Apple Watch, AirPods, AirTag, HomePod, and Apple Vision Pro devices.

Apple announced its plan to switch Mac computers from Intel processors to Apple silicon at WWDC 2020 on June 22, 2020.

The first Macs built with the Apple M1 chip were unveiled on November 10, 2020. As of June 2023, the entire Mac lineup uses Apple silicon chips.

Apple fully controls the integration of Apple silicon chips with the company's hardware and software products. Johny Srouji is in charge of Apple's silicon design.

Manufacturing of the chips is outsourced to semiconductor contract manufacturers such as Samsung and TSMC.

At the link, look at the long list of chips.

There are no less than nine "chips." The term "chips" is used broadly.

• A, H, M, R, S, T, U, W, M (again).

News: brand new -- the R series. The R1 is a key component of the new Vision Pro.

Coming: M3. 

Apple 3nm. Link here.

Apple made the last big fabrication process jump in 2020, when it moved to TSMC's 5nm process with the A14 Bionic and the M1 chip. Some chips, such as the S6, S7, and S8 in the Apple Watch have continued to use a 7nm fabrication process because they are based on the A13 Bionic – Apple's final 7nm chip designed for the iPhone.

Apple introduced the A16 Bionic chip with the iPhone 14 Pro and ‌iPhone 14 Pro‌ Max last year. Apple claims that it is a 4nm chip because it uses TSMC's "N4" process, but in reality it is made with an enhanced version of TSMC's 5nm N5 and N5P processes.

At minimum, 3nm should provide the biggest performance and efficiency leap to Apple's chips since 2020. The increased number of transistors that are made possible by 3nm allows the chip to perform more tasks simultaneously and at a faster rate, while using less power.

The next-generation production technique allows chips to use up to 35 percent less power while providing better performance compared to the 5nm process that Apple has used for all of its A- and M-series chips since 2020.

According to The Information, future Apple silicon chips built on the 3nm process will feature up to four dies, which would support up to 40 compute cores. The M2 chip has a 10-core CPU and the ‌M2‌ Pro and Max have 12-core CPUs, so 3nm could significantly boost multi-core performance.