At the moment, Apple’s A13 Bionic chipsets are built on the 7nm fabrication process, but with the upcoming A14, which is expected to debut in this year’s iPhones, it will be upgraded to the 5nm process, but that is expected to drastically change in the next two years because according to DigiTimes, the A16 chipset in 2022 will be built on the 3nm process.
The report claims that TSMC is apparently on track to start producing the A16 chipsets in 2022, and that the chipmaker has already started to construct production lines and various related facilities to help them with that, although given that 2022 is still quite a long time away, we suppose things could change from now until then.
For those who are unfamiliar with the fabrication process and what this means, basically by building chipsets using a smaller fabrication, it helps to cram more transistors into the chip, reducing the amount of travel it takes. For the end-user, this should (in theory) translate to chipsets that are faster and also more energy efficient.
What’s interesting about this rumor is that not only will this affect Apple’s iPhones and iPads, but given that Apple is rumored to make the transition to ARM-based Mac computers, there is no doubt that this will play a crucial role in helping Apple develop more powerful ARM chipsets that could rival x86 chips used by Intel. Take it with a grain of salt for now, but Apple is rumored to announce their new ARM-based chipset for Macs at WWDC 2020, so maybe we’ll get more hints then.
Filed in . Read more about iPad, iPhone, SoC and Social Hit. Source: appleinsider