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Inside the iPhone 6s

The first question you have to ask is who did the design migration, Apple or TSMC? Last year Morris Change admitted that a competitor may have the lead in 2015 for FinFETs. That was a shocking statement coming from the Chairman because he does not like losing business to anyone. My guess is that TSMC did the migration as a bet on getting some of the A9 business for whatever reason. This is something that the Chairman would do, absolutely, and that bet paid off.

In my former life I did quite a few design migrations from process to process at equal geometries and migrations to smaller geometries. The biggest trade off you have is area, which could explain the density difference. Sound reasonable?
 
A guy developed an app to track the internal SoC manufacturer.
Many thousands of results are already in the database, so the overall share is starting to be significant.
CPU Identifier

Interesting enough, it looks like TSMC has got a 60% share and SAM the remaining 40%. Even more interesting is that the ratio is different based on the iphone model.
The 6s has an 80% of TSMC chip inside, while the 6s+ less than 50%.
If this split is confirmed, we can pretty much already conclude that there is no significant difference between the 2 SoC in terms of performance.
I have checked in fact the geekbench score population of both the iphone 6s and the iphone 6s+, and I do not see any clear double distribution. For sure a side by side comparison would be meaningless, considering the below graphs standard deviations:
iPhone8,1 Benchmark Chart - Geekbench Browser
iPhone8,2 Benchmark Chart - Geekbench Browser

I can't still say anything about battery drain and phone heat up.
 
I am just thinking out loud... could it be that Apple did this in order to hurt more Samsung rather than anything else? I mean, if Apple had initially guided Samsung that it would be the sole manufacturer of A9* chips and Samsung made all the investments to be able to cover demand, then Apple cuts down on the volume and Samsung is left with spending millions or billions that it cannot utilize. In the meantime, if what you are saying about TSMC doing the migration for free, Apple gains dual sourcing (without the actual cost), price leverage with TSMC and great pricing from Samsung.... Anyway, just thoughts...
 
It looks like the web app performs a quick hardware diagnostic on the iPhone and posts the results to the author's site. I don't know Xcode or Swift...but that's what I gathered from reading bits of his code & description. I'm not sure is if the author is able to eliminate duplicates (people who view his site multiple times). Still....it looks pretty neat.

UPDATE: MacRumors posted an article about the diagnostic app. It looks like the results were from around 2,500 iPhones. They don't recommend installing the app (due to the author being "untrusted")....however, they do give him a nice shout-out.

Here is the article
A9 Chip Manufacturing Split 60/40 Between TSMC and Samsung, Not Segmented by Device Size - Mac Rumors
 
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Daniel Nenni said:
Will Samsung stay in the foundry business without Apple?
Click to expand...

Samsung was able to nab Qualcomm (formerly TSMC's biggest customer) and their Snapdragon 820 chip so I imagine their foundry business is safe. That said I wonder how Qualcomm really feels about doing business with Samsung. A Forbes article suggests that the Snapdragon 810-overheating rumors were started by Samsung.
 
prime007 said:
Samsung was able to nab Qualcomm (formerly TSMC's biggest customer) and their Snapdragon 820 chip so I imagine their foundry business is safe. That said I wonder how Qualcomm really feels about doing business with Samsung. A Forbes article suggests that the Snapdragon 810-overheating rumors were started by Samsung.
Click to expand...

Here's the story behind that:

Qualcomm has always multi sourced their chips, it is an integral part of their culture. QCOM would pick one fab to develop with then 2nd, 3rd, and even 4th source production. Unfortunately that stopped at 28nm because TSMC was the only fab to yield properly and ended up with 90% market share.

At 20nm TSMC signed a deal with the devil (Apple) which gave them right of first refusal and favored nation pricing protection. As a result Apple released the 20nm A8 last year and the rest of the fabless herd had to wait until 2015.That of course was a slap in QCOM's face.

So QCOM moved development to Samsung for 14nm (Samsung being their largest customer) only to get hit in the face with Exynos for the Samsung S6 products. Now I'm told QCOM is back at TSMC but that could change if Apple gets another sweetheart deal at 10nm.

In regards to the 810, this is a TSMC 20nm part but it does not use the QCOM custom architecture. It uses standard ARM 64-bit cores just like Exynos. Apple slapped QCOM and the rest of the world with a custom 64-bit SoC in the iPhone5s and everybody else used standard ARM cores while playing 64 bit catch up. So yes it probably was power challenged but I was told by friends at QCOM that is was pre production silicon and has since been fixed.

As far as who leaked it? Look at all of the legal cases against Samsung. They have been found guilty of similar behavior against HTC so I would not doubt it at all:

Samsung Fined For Paying People to Criticize HTC's Products - ABC News
 
kingmouf said:
I am just thinking out loud... could it be that Apple did this in order to hurt more Samsung rather than anything else? I mean, if Apple had initially guided Samsung that it would be the sole manufacturer of A9* chips and Samsung made all the investments to be able to cover demand, then Apple cuts down on the volume and Samsung is left with spending millions or billions that it cannot utilize. In the meantime, if what you are saying about TSMC doing the migration for free, Apple gains dual sourcing (without the actual cost), price leverage with TSMC and great pricing from Samsung.... Anyway, just thoughts...
Click to expand...

I think Samsung knows Apple is playing a game with a typical supplier/customer relationship plus a hidden competitor intention. But Samsung chose to stay in this Apple's game.

First, all Samsung product divisions (display, consumer electronics, smartphones, memory) are facing very tough market condition even saw large revenue and profit decline. They have to get as much business as possible to maintain their factory's utilization rate.

Second, if Samsung say no to various Apple's demand, in many cases Apple can easily replace Samsung with second or even third supplier waiting in line. Samsung has limited ability to hurt Apple but Apple can easily hurt Samsung by going (or using more) other suppliers. With so many lawsuits between Apple and Samsung on record, it looks like Apple actually is giving Samsung a big favor by keeping Samsung as a suppler.

So even knowing Apple's A9 order has some serious consequence, Samsung has no choice but to play along.
 
prime007 said:
A Forbes article suggests that the Snapdragon 810-overheating rumors were started by Samsung.
Click to expand...
Maybe that's true, anyway, it was not just a rumor to me.
LG had to move to a less power demanding snapdragon 808 for its G4, the HTC one M9 sales have been hugely affected by this issue and you can comment by yourselves about the impact on the Sony Xperia Z5:
z5-heat.jpg

Sony Xperia Z5: overheating Snapdragon 810 still an issue?
 
Qualcomm attributed its Snapdragon 810 overheating problems to early silicon. Their actual words were "pre-production", although some OEMs went to production with those versions.

The current Snapdragon 810 is a V2.1. All the OEMs using it have moved up to this latest version.

We think the Samsung Galaxy S6 change was in the works anyway, a move to their own chips. (Those kind of decisions get made 18 months in advance, not 3.) It didn't hurt to take a PR jab at Qualcomm.

As we discuss in Chapter 8 of the upcoming "Mobile, Unleashed", Samsung is kind of in a zero-sum game - they can build a part for their own phones, build a part for Apple, or build a part for Qualcomm. The days off boffo mobile growth are done, but I have no worries about Samsung fabs staying full, even splitting biz with TSMC for the Apple A9.
 
prime007 said:
Samsung was able to nab Qualcomm (formerly TSMC's biggest customer) and their Snapdragon 820 chip so I imagine their foundry business is safe. That said I wonder how Qualcomm really feels about doing business with Samsung. A Forbes article suggests that the Snapdragon 810-overheating rumors were started by Samsung.
Click to expand...

There were enough reviews of phones containing the 810 confirming overheating or severe throttling as well as user reports for it not be a rumour regardless of who started it.
 
Daniel Nenni said:
I had originally predicted a 70-30% split giving Samsung the majority based on sales of the iPhone versus iPad. Now I would say it is still a 70-30% with TSMC getting majority. I also predict that TSMC will get 100% of the iPhone/iPad business in 2016 which begs the question: Will Samsung stay in the foundry business without Apple?
Click to expand...
Daniel, why do you think TSMC will get 100% of A10 business? Surely not being single sourced is more important for Apple than worrying about dealing with your biggest competitor. If TSMC some how screwed up production, Apple would be dead given their total reliance on the iPhone and the upgrade cycle. Even if the migration to a second source costs $100m, what does that matter to Apple who probably waste that every year one worrying about the design of things like their cafeteria tables!
 
Daniel Nenni said:
Any thoughts on how this app works? Color me skeptical...
Click to expand...

Yeah me too. There's no way to query SoC manufacture via software. I think this is a bogus App.
Also, TSMC did not get 40% of iPhone 6s orders - we know that because Q3 and Q4 revenues are down from last year. TSMC said that in Q3 16nm would not contribute anything significantly to revenue. So I'd say TSMC SoC make up less 1% at the moment and will increase later on as they ramp up.
 
Don Dingee said:
Qualcomm attributed its Snapdragon 810 overheating problems to early silicon. Their actual words were "pre-production", although some OEMs went to production with those versions.
Click to expand...

I seems weird to me to produce enough chips of a 'pre-production' version of your chip so OEMs can go to market with it...
 
lefty said:
Yeah me too. There's no way to query SoC manufacture via software. I think this is a bogus App.
Click to expand...
And I think instead you are wrong.
If you do not trust the app (fair enough, I do not either), build the code by yourself:
https://github.com/WDUK/A9ChipSource

You can also buy a good app from the store (of course not meant to do that), called System Status and simply go to the Details tab and then scroll down to the Device Information section. There is an entry labeled "type" that shows either N66AP (Samsung) or N66MAP (TSMC) for the plus version, N71AP (Samsung) or N71MAP (TSMC) for the standard.
Apple might also have customized drivers depending of the different SoC type, so for sure they also want and need to know what chip is inside that specific iphone by software.

 
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there's no documentation on that API call, so the signifigance of N66MAP, or N66AP is just a wild guess - it may not refer to the manuafacture at all
 
Speedfriend said:
Daniel, why do you think TSMC will get 100% of A10 business? Surely not being single sourced is more important for Apple than worrying about dealing with your biggest competitor. If TSMC some how screwed up production, Apple would be dead given their total reliance on the iPhone and the upgrade cycle. Even if the migration to a second source costs $100m, what does that matter to Apple who probably waste that every year one worrying about the design of things like their cafeteria tables!
Click to expand...

That's a good question. Samsung was late to 28nm which hurt Apple. TSMC delivered perfectly on 20nm and contrary to media reports Samsung did not get any of the A8 business. I really am quite shocked that Apple would split the A9 between TSMC and Samsung. The business really was Samsung's to lose and somehow they did just that.

You have to remember that wafer agreements are signed more than a year in advance of production. For the volumes Apple requires fabs must be built, materials must be ordered, etc... I do know that Samsung had the wafer agreement for the A9 and TSMC the A9x. What happened after that I do not know but I will certainly find out.

It is also important to note that the TSMC 16FF+ process uses the same fabs as 20nm so TSMC already had the capacity built up and yielding (Samsung did not). So it really wasn't a big gamble for Morris to be ready for the A9 business in case Samsung stumbled.

The proof in the pudding will be the Q3 conference call. Apple is shipping a lot of chips so there is no way for TSMC to hide it either way.

Apple requires customized versions of the process and for the A10 it is TSMC 16XXX (custom Apple number) which is a compact version of 16FF+. After the A9 debacle however I will no longer bet on this because Apple can move silicon mountains......
 
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lefty said:
That means nothing. It's not official Apple documentation. Anyone can edit those pages.
Click to expand...
Lefty, I respect your opinion, but I still believe is not correct, that´s it.
Basically, you are suggesting me that I should not trust anything I have linked here, but assume instead quite possible that Chipworks got just by change an iphone with a TSMC chip inside, based on your 1% share guess. Sorry, I simply can´t, even if that should turn true. I do not believe in concidences, I´m an engineer. :rolleyes:

lefty said:
TSMC did not get 40% of iPhone 6s orders - we know that because Q3 and Q4 revenues are down from last year. TSMC said that in Q3 16nm would not contribute anything significantly to revenue. So I'd say TSMC SoC make up less 1% at the moment and will increase later on as they ramp up
Click to expand...
 
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