SoC / SiP Update With Focus On Apple M4 -- June 17, 2024

Locator: 47873M4.    

Tag: Intel, INTC.

My links to tech, at the "Tech" page tabbed above:

 Chips, semiconductor: link here.

• Home page for tech: link here.
• The cloud: link here.  
• Streaming: link here. Streaming wars.
• Spatial computing: link here.
• Generative AI: link here. 
• AI: Apple intelligence.
  
• Apple Silicon: link here.
• chip count updates.
• chip count.
  
• Supercomputers: link here.
• Data centers: link here. 
• System on a chip (SOC): link here.
• Apple Intelligence (AI), short title, Siri: link here. 
• WWDC24: link here.

Apple Silicon, perhaps the most important three paragraphs in the tech world:

Apple silicon refers to 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 TSMC. 

I read and re-read those three paragraphs not infrequently. 

Apple has a number of SoC / SiP series of chips. See link above. 

The M-series is found in "every" family of Apple hardware, but not necessarily in every model in every "family" of Apple hardware.

The "M" series:
M1: revolutionary
M2: evolutionary
M3: evolutionary
M4: revolutionary

From the link above, the M4:

Main article: Apple M4

Apple announced the M4 chip on May 7, 2024, along with the new seventh-generation iPad Pro models. The M4 is based on the N3E process rather than the N3B process used by the M3, and contains 28 billion transistors. 

It has three or four performance cores, six efficiency cores and ten GPU cores. Apple claims the M4 has up to 1.5x faster CPU performance compared to the M2.

Note the "N3E" reference.

From Reddit posted recently with even more recent updates, link here. 

There is a lot of information packed in that thread that will take you down any number of rabbit holes.

I found this one particularly interesting, from an investor's point of view:

One assumes this market share is "outside" the Apple family of chips.  

More importantly:

• that goose egg following Intel is pretty shocking, for lack of a better word.

So, anyway, another attempt to put this puzzle together.  

Later: more and the M4, link here.

The M4 is expected to be announced later today during Apple’s ‘Let Loose’ event, and with the company already employing the use of TSMC’s 3nm technology before, we immediately assumed that the new silicon would be fabricated on this lithography. However, one report states that unlike the M3 powering various Macs and mass produced on the ‘N3B’ architecture, Apple’s M4 will switch to the updated ‘N3E’ process, resulting in various improvements. The report also mentions that the upcoming SoC will arrive in three variants, which is nothing unusual regarding Apple Silicon releases.

TSMC’s 3nm ‘N3E’ architecture enables better yields, higher computational performance, and improved power efficiency when directly compared to the ‘N3B’ node. With the China Times reporting that the M4 will transition to the improved manufacturing process, Apple can effectively cut down its component costs by having more supply at hand. The same SoC is also said to be found in other upcoming machines, such as entry-level Macs, so with an excess chip supply in its possession, the technology giant can have adequate shipment available for customers.