There has been a lot of talk regarding Apple’s A9 SoC and who will be making it. As it stands there are two companies that have been talked about a lot – Samsung and TSMC. The latter was responsible for some of Apple’s previous chipsets, but it looks like Samsung will be taking the lead this time with the A9.
This is according to a report from Bloomberg who has heard from their sources that Samsung will be winning the contract that will give them the opportunity to manufacture Apple’s next chipset which will presumably be used to power this year’s iPhone. This seemingly confirms previous reports which have suggested that Samsung will be producing all, if not the majority of the A9 chipset.
There has been a bit of back and forth with regards to the rumors, with reports from earlier this year stating that TSMC would be leading the charge, which was later followed by rumors that Samsung could be producing as much as 75% of Apple’s orders. However today’s report from Bloomberg states that Samsung will be taking charge and that the remainder will be given to Globalfoundries Inc., a partner of Samsung.
It has been speculated that Samsung’s use of the 14nm manufacturing process could be what gave them the edge over TSMC which still uses the 20nm process. Unsurprisingly all of the companies involved in the rumor have declined to comment on it.