It became the talk of many tech communities early on the iPhone 17 series and it’s surprising how much interest there is despite the fact that we haven’t seen the iPhone 16 yet!
The iPhone 17 series was previously expected to come with a 2nm chipset made by TSMC. While this could be great news for the iPhone 17 series, this is not possible due to technological limitations.
The latest news comes from Weibo tipster “Mobile chip expert”, who claims that chipsets with 2nm manufacturing technologies will not be ready for mass production until the end of 2025. In fact, the tipster in question also mentioned that the chips 2nm won’t be available until the iPhone 18 series. This means that the iPhone 17 series will continue to use TSMC’s 3nm.
TSMC plans to start mass production of 2nm chips next year, but several Taiwanese media reported that the company is speeding up the process so as to ensure stable production for mass production. Not to mention, Apple is a major customer of the semiconductor manufacturer. The company owns significant production capacity of TSMC’s latest process nodes for Apple Silicon and chips intended for smartphones. For example, in 2023, Apple gave all 3nm chip orders to TSMC for iPhone, iPad and Mac production.
TSMC’s 2nm process node is expected deliver a 10% to 15% speed increase with the same power consumption or a 25% to 30% reduction in power consumption at the same speed compared to chips manufactured with the company’s 3nm technology.
The current A17 Pro chip (which powers the iPhone 15 Pro models) is manufactured using the company’s first-generation 3nm process. In contrast, the latest M4 chip (which powers the iPad Pro 2024) is made using a second-generation 3nm fabrication process.
Speaking of the iPhone 16 series, the code in iOS 18 confirmed that all four models will use the next-generation A18 chip based on the second-generation 3nm process.
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Source: myphone.gr
