According to industry sources, Apple has reserved nearly 90 percent of TSMC’s first-generation 3nm chip production capacity this year for future iPhones, Macs, and iPads. This could lead to significant revenue growth for TSMC in the second half of 2023.
Apple’s next-generation chips will all be produced with 3nm lithography, so DigiTimes’ report that TSMC has reserved nearly all of its production capacity makes sense.
iPhones, Macs and iPads arrive with 3nm chips
This year, Apple will unveil the iPhone 15 series phones, and the Pro models are expected to be equipped with the 3nm A17 Bionic chip. This chip is manufactured with TSMC’s first generation 3nm lithography called N3B, which improves energy efficiency by 35% and increases performance by 15% compared to the current 4nm process used for the A16 Bionic.
In addition to iPhones, other Apple products such as future Macs and iPads will also be equipped with 3nm chips. In fact, the chips of the M3 family are produced with this lithography, and the first products equipped with the standard M3 chip are expected to be the new 13-inch MacBook Air, 24-inch iMac and 13-inch MacBook Pro. Later, the iPad will arrive with this chip. Next year, we have to wait for the new MacBook Pro 14 and 16 inches with the Pro and Max models of the M3 chip.
Yesterday, it was announced in the news that Apple is testing the base version of the M3 Pro chip. This chip is apparently equipped with 12 processing cores and 18 graphics cores, which has two processing cores and two graphics cores more than the M2 Pro. Increasing the number of cores along with the use of 3nm lithography can significantly increase the processing and graphics power of the next generation of Apple chips. In addition, their energy efficiency increases.
