While you are trying to determine if you are going to invest in a new iPhone 17 this fall, we always like to remind you that something better will always happen soon. The latest report of the future comes from the GF Securities Jeff JEFF analyst, which gives an overview of the A20 chip which will be used in the iPhone 18 next year.
According to several reports, TSMC, the manufacturer of Apple chips, uses an improved 3 Nm process for the iPhone 17 chip of this year. The reports indicate that this will be the last chip to use the 3 NM process, because TSMC will increase to 2 Nm for the A20 in the iPhone 18 Pro and the folding iPhone. According to PU, TSMC will make the A20 using the multi-chip module packaging of brochure level (WMCM), where the components of the chip are integrated into the chip at the tranche. This would allow, for example, the RAM of the A20 to be integrated into the components of the CPU, the GPU, the neural engine and other components at the level of the slice. This is different from the current method of using a silicon interim to connect RAM.
With the RAM closer to the CPU and other components of the chip, this could lead to an improvement in electrical efficiency and a decrease in operating temperature, which could offer advantages to battery life. It could also make the physical size of the A20 smaller, which, again, would help the efficiency of the energy, and could also benefit the overall design of the iPhone 18 – in particular the folding iPhone, which will consist on two thin sides which fold in a thicker.
PU reports indicate that the 2 NM process is to pass transistors with a field of swimming fields (Finfet) to field transistors (GAAFET). The switch should make it possible to improve performance with better energy efficiency, but it is not clear if the effect on energy efficiency would be even greater due to WMCM packaging.
The nanometric process refers to the production of the chip, and 2 nm allows an increased transistor density compared to processes 3 Nm and 5 Nm previous. The higher the density of the transistor, the better performance and the process can also lead to better energy efficiency. Apple’s first 3 Nm was the A17 Pro, which made its debut in the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max.
