There has been much speculation over who could be building the next generation of processors for Apple. Manufacturing of the A8 has been done mostly by Taiwan's TSMC. This time, however, Samsung claims the role of providing the production needs of Apple.
In October, Dr. Kinam Kim, president and general manager of the semiconductor business of Samsung, told reporters that the role would enable Samsung to improve profits as it starts supplying Apple with chips that come from its 14nm line.
The said chips will be used in the next-generation iPhone devices, thanks to the 14nm technology of Samsung. The Korean company claims that apart from being faster, the A9 is also more efficient and consumes less battery power compared to chips that they had previously designed.
According to some industry insiders, Samsung began the initial stage of production of Apple's A9 chip at its Austin, Texas plant which, along with its production plant in Giheung, Korea, is equipped with performing FinFET process production.
Samsung initially said that it will begin production of the 14nm chip toward the end of 2014, although it didn't reveal if the company received the production order for the A9 chips from Apple or if the production line was already actively running.
"We said we would inject production wafers when we announced Q3 performance," said Samsung. "But we cannot confirm whether we received orders from Apple or at which plant it will be produced."
Apple, on its part, is still expected to split the orders between Samsung and TSMC. While it shows that the company does not want to be totally reliant on a single supplier, it seems that Samsung would be gaining much from the company's confidence in building its next-generation chip. Apple may have tried to minimize its dependence on Samsung, which it considers its nearest mobile rival. However, Samsung's technological prowess seems too difficult to ignore for Apple, which then sees the company as a significant partner.
The A9 chip will have to go into mass production in order to allow Apple to create the needed inventory for the iPhone 7, which is speculated to have a late September 2015 release. The production is currently for a smaller "custom" order, which will be used in the prototype of the iPhone 7.
