News

Apple rumoured to drop Samsung for TSMC for A6 chip production

Pencilled in for iPad 3

Apple rumoured to drop Samsung for TSMC for A6 chip production
Taiwan Economic News has rumoured that Apple has passed over Samsung for production of its nextgen A6 processor.

It says the world's largest chip fab, TSMC has started to work up its processes with a plan for the production design to be taped out in the first quarter of 2011 and scheduled to be publicly unveiled in the summer for iPad 3.

It's expected A6 will be a dual - possibly even quad-core - processor, based on ARM's Cortex CPU. TMSC is expected to employ a 28-nanometer process and 3D stacking technologies.

Two tribes

Apple and Samsung are currently in legal dispute in the US and Europe over what Apple claims are similarities between Samsung's smartphones and tablets. Apple has forced Samsung to halt the launch of its Galaxy 10.1 tablet in Europe and Australia.

To-date, TSMC's main customers have been Nvidia and Qualcomm.

[source: Taiwan Economic News]
Contributing Editor

A Pocket Gamer co-founder, Jon is Contributing Editor at PG.biz which means he acts like a slightly confused uncle who's forgotten where he's left his glasses. As well as letters and cameras, he likes imaginary numbers and legumes.