1. Dismantling verify some iPhone 7 use Intel baseband chips; 2. A10 Fusion is very powerful Apple as Intel's biggest threats; 3. GLOBALFOUNDRIES 2 to 7, 2018 nm process; 4. Mediatek attack in the top 10 nm Helio X30, X35 repeating; 5. A10X is probably the first 10 nm

1. Dismantling verify some iPhone 7 use Intel baseband chips;

Tencent technology (smartphone era for Intel, a mixed. Because of the slow, Intel's mobile application processor market good jiangshan, from handing the qualcomm and mediatek. Recently received a good news, however, confirmed that Intel has successfully won the apple iPhone mobile phone baseband processor 7 orders, Intel finally found a little presence.

Integrated wiring and technology media reports, in the United States, in June of this year, the bloomberg has quoted the sources revealed that Intel has already won the apple phone baseband processor (MODEM) order. The proportion of specific orders, unknown.

Recently, the news for the support of real evidence. Apple iPhone 7 phones have begun to retail, and some of the dismantling agencies also got the phone. Disassemble say Chipworks, they analyzed a "A1778" model for the U.S. market new cell phone, which found Intel provides clear baseband chips.

Intel chips also involves rf transceiver, power management system, etc.

Qualcomm, of course, would still be baseband chip suppliers, other institutions for dismantling also found in the iPhone 7 Plus qualcomm baseband.

Previously, Intel's mobile chip business executives Navin Shenoy said that in the future will be more and more important, MODEM chip 4 g and 5 g baseband chips will be more and more complex, the world there will be less and less to design production company. Have also look to the outside world, broadcom, NVIDIA, Marvell company has successively withdrew from the baseband market. And Intel has stopped a foothold in this market.

Traditionally, Intel has always been a person computer and server processor manufacturers, most of the world's computers are marked with "Intel Inside". However, Intel later acquired semiconductor company infineon wireless communications department, the communication chip design ability.

It is worth mentioning that in intelligent mobile phone chips, generally includes application processor and a baseband processor two kinds big. And Intel had been decisively abandoned application processor market. Before the launch of the atom in the market is not beautiful, a bulk purchase only lenovo, asus, the two companies, market share is almost negligible. In the end, Intel announced the atom no longer upgrade roadmap.

To give up the application processor market, apparently, is not to Intel announced the smartphone chip market.

Just last month, Intel announced from former rival British ARM, obtained the authorization of the ARM chip. This means that Intel's future will develop more mobile chips or contract manufacturing.

Apple and Intel, actually is a long-term partner. At an early age, apple gave up on the PowerPC architecture processor, turned to the personal computer industry mainstream Intel x86 architecture of the chip. Apple almost all of the computer chips, are from Intel.

Currently, qualcomm and Intel will give apple mobile phone baseband chip at the same time, according to foreign media reported before, Intel order proportion may be less than thirty percent, and apple will be sold in the United States Intel chips implanted in the cell phone, and mobile phones sold in China, is still a qualcomm chip. (integrated/morning)

2. A10 Fusion is very powerful Apple as Intel's biggest threats;

Phoenix technologies - Beijing time on September 17, news, apple iPhone 7 and 7 Plus installed on A10 Fusion processor, this kind of processor performance has a lot of improvement, reviewers was amazing. Technology commentators, Vlad saffo, husband (Vlad Savov) argues that the evaluation result of the Fusion A10 and already Intel notebook CPU, this is an important signal. In the future, apple may put mobile processor in a laptop, abandon the Intel. For Intel to say, the real threat is not AMD, but apple.

The original is as follows:

Played chess knows that, in some cases, even if your pieces intact, if the position row of misconduct and could also collapse moment. In the matrix films, Agent Smith (Agent Smith) once proudly told police: "you are dead." In today's technology industry, we are likely to witness the same thing. Apple introduced a new A10 Fusion processor that pose a threat to Intel, the, swallowed a large map.

You might say my comments purely his own, I'm not saying that Intel will become "disabled", in the short term, it won't be transcended. I just said Intel suffered a serious threat, in a very long period of time, it has not met for such a big challenge. See Geekbench evaluation data reveals that the iPhone has made amazing progress: apple new smartphones processor single-core performance has catch up with Intel notebook CPU performance. A10 easily exceeded apple processor, defeated the Android competition rivals, than many of the relatively new Mac, as well as the Mac Pro is a bit old. For a long time, the iPhone is "laggards" in the evaluation, this caused countless criticism, although only one indicator, but we can find that: apple is speed up, it's core is mobile.

Speak in a digital

On X86 desktop and notebook processors processor, Intel is worthy of the king for many years. Its only rival AMD, but since the start of this century, AMD it will be difficult to really challenge Intel, we use "Wintel alliance" to describe a powerful Intel processors and Microsoft Windows. Once upon a time, Intel pentium processor and AMD Thunderbird bucket was tight, but this time round, the situation has become a big difference.

First of all, the whole world is shift to mobile computing. Please note that the speed of this transition is not slow, such as the AI is very slow, it hasn't appeared on the horizon, mobile computing is rapidly spread. Advertisers from print media to retreat, into the desktop platform, now they move faster to flat front, now, the number of consumers to purchase new smartphone is as 5 times as the PC. In 2015, according to IDC, global shipping 1.43 billion smartphones, and only 276 million PCS. In the fourth quarter of 2015, 74.8 million sets of apple iPhone shipments, only 71.9 million units worldwide PC shipments in the quarter.

From figures, apple is A series of mobile processors have been just as important as Intel x86 processors, became the market leader. A10 future apple will launch a new Fusion processor, its performance will get a promotion, then the existing "quasi equilibrium" situation will be changed. Laptop has been used is Intel CPU, because of its powerful, here's the thing, why not apple A10 processor (or later) into the laptop? Why don't next generation MacBook, apple's own processors installed and iPhone? No wrong, MacBook collocation macOS system is developed based on X86 architecture, and A series of the processor is the ARM architecture, so we can't help thinking another question: will apple iOS into general operating system?

For PC installed mobile processors

A10 sounds a little odd, but in fact has a strong performance, the efficiency is very high, can be like a complete PC processing tasks. Both mobile devices and desktop PC, have the tendency of integration: on the one hand, mobile chips more powerful, on the other hand, our demand for computing power is falling, mission is becoming more and more mobile. You might think that your office is not much change, because many dell workstation there, next to the HP printer, the fact is not the case, because more and more work done outside office, completed by mobile phone. If you want to run high performance requirements of X86 application, we still cannot leave a macOS, such as Photoshop and Lightroom applications. Still, all the function have the aura to iOS, apple launched last year iPadPro product line, it is a good example.

Unlike Windows, x86 closely related with the PC game market, it is a lucrative market, apple macOS competitive enough in the game. In the past many years, many research and development effort on iOS, apple will because of this, the two software speed will be inconsistent. In many ways, macOS is a old software, at some point in time will be discarded. MacOS indeed there will be some updates, but the most attractive place is its relationship with the iOS and the iPhone.

PC box is the symbol of advanced computing, our generation growing up with the PC box. Because of this, it is difficult for us to understand the shift. Today's PC is equivalent to the mainframe: it is very big, very spectacular only when we need heavy task.

Intel disappoint apple

In the future days, Intel will still be somewhere. With the increase of the workload, work more and more complex, parallel tasks can also improve processing ability, the future may be 12 nuclear Mac Pro, it performance beyond the iPhone 7. Of course, you can also install powerful graphics card in the PC, installation of large capacity memory, storage capacity also don't have to worry about. But the high-end PC market is small, is shrinking. Today, we become more and more like to use when making video Snapchat Live Stories, instead of Adobe Premiere Pro.

Intel ever disappoint apple, the MacBook installed Core M processor, the results of performance; This year, the MacBook Pro and Air not support Skylake processor, probably because not satisfied with the apple to Intel CPU. Apple is good at vertical integration, it try our best to control the supply, every link in production chain, is to be used in equipment own processor, it is a logical step.

If you are ready to develop the next generation of processors, please start moving. For decades, Intel has been trying to, want to desktop processor into mobile devices, the reduced the result unsatisfactory. Now apple series A processor performance by leaps and bounds, it chooses the path could be right. Apple named his new processor "Fusion" A10, and "Fusion" has the meaning of integration, it may be suitable for this name, because mobile and desktop PC may integrate in the end. As they say, is only a matter of time.

3. GLOBALFOUNDRIES 2 to 7, 2018 nm process;

As AMD the most dependent on OEM partners, GlobalFoundries process progress can also affect AMD CPU/GPU development. GF now decided to skip 10 nm process, direct launch performance stronger 7 nm FinFET process, but on the progress, the industry generally believe that GlobalFoundries speed is more slowly than samsung, TSMC and Intel, they will launch in 2019 12 nm SOI process, FD - 7 nm production seems to be more distant. But today GlobalFoundries publicly for the first time 7 nm process development, trial production, is expected to begin in 2018 and has already started cooperation with leading partners.

GlobalFoundries previously has been stumbling on process research and development, cruel abandoned FinFET process node from the grind of 14 nm - XM process, direct use of the 14 nm samsung FinFET authorization, has formally production this year, AMD OEM for Polaris graphics card, in the future there will be Zen architecture processor, finally was stabilized, the two sides of each other's cooperation is quite satisfactory, shortly before wafer the supply agreement signed in the next five years.

After 14/16 nm process is 10 nm node, TSMC and samsung are contending for the end of the year or early next year to launch 10 nm generation of labor service, Intel in the second half of next year 10 nm process mass production, but GlobalFoundries decided to skip the 10 nm node, the reason we also analysis before, relatively speaking, 10 nm process is considered to be 14/16 nm process optimization, with 20 nm process to low power consumption, belongs to the transitional node, and GlobalFoundries oneself also very fragile, just skip this node, directly kill to future high-performance 7 nm node.

The question is when 7 nm GlobalFoundries, after all, TSMC and samsung also progress on 7 nm node soon, both sides are launched in 2018, the new process, and TSMC is confident, think oneself 7 nm process on the performance, power consumption and the core area is more than friends. Now GlobalFoundries official finally revealed the beans, it at Saratoga, New York Fab 8 7 nm process factory research and development, is expected to risk trials in 2018.

GlobalFoundries also released the specific performance - 7 nm process compared with the current 16/14 nm FinFET process, 7 nm process will bring double transistor density increasing, performance improvement or power consumption reduced by 60% 30%. In addition, GlobalFoundries said 7 nm process can reuse a considerable amount of 14 nm semiconductor manufacturing equipment, will also continue to use the current lithography, but retain the ability to use tools machine of the future - EUV process is expected to officially launch in 5 nm node.

Although will trial-produce earlier in 2018, but in the second half of 2017 clients can start the product design, this progress very fast, just came out of the final product will have to wait a long time, flow sheet after successful usually have gears time to market, in 2019 is likely to see 7 nm products.

It is worth noting that GlobalFoundries has been working with leading clients in Fab 8 factory 7 nm chip prototype - although they have not released is who, but can work with GF closest is AMD, earlier reports revealed that AMD in preparation for the next generation of 7 nm process server chip, code-named "starship troopers" (starship), 48 nuclear 96 threads, are more powerful than the Naples napoli. xfastest

4. Mediatek attack in the top 10 nm Helio X30, X35 repeating;

Mediatek to enlarge the coverage of product line, the first 10 nanochips "x" in accordance with the plan by the end of next year, will be at the beginning of mass production, to those of higher order market, consider launching 10 same nai metric cheng "X35", expand the higher-order market demand.

Mediatek is already one of the first customers 10 nanometers, TSMC market recently, mediatek internal assessment of a specification version of ten extra nanochips the sunrise force (Helio) "X35", as a legal person believes that this will benefit up contract 10 nanometers in TSMC capacity utilization.

Mediatek hustle high-order market actively, the original planning to launch this year one or two 16 nanometers and a 10 nanochips. But due to the market change quickly, reset the product blueprint (Road Map) earlier this year, the original plan by TSMC 16 nanoscale FinFET process production of Gao Jiejing Helio "x" to 10 nanochips, sprinting to 10 nanometers.

Supply chain, mediatek first 10 nanochips "x" is TSMC has entered into the phase of design finalized, this month you will get the sample piece and progress smoothly, in accordance with the plan, a meeting at the beginning of the end of this year, next year, becoming mediatek only major mobile phone brand factory's flagship model.

Mediatek chips had high hopes for 10 nanometers, not only faster than top rivals Qualcomm, Qualcomm rob, more hope I can score each big mobile phone brand factory's flagship model, thereby raising product average price (ASP) and gross margin. Two mobile phone chip factory 10 nanometers products, will also affect the city share of TSMC and samsung ebb and flow.

Mediatek efforts will high order of products over the past two years, last year called the sunrise force "Helio" series of products, hope to be able to score a line of mobile phone brand factory's flagship model, and higher ASP, last year launching "X10", "P10" and in the first three months of this year's "X20" mass production, the third quarter production "P20" and a series of chips.

Mediatek "Helio" chip all the way with HTC, Sony (Sony), millet, OPPO, Vivo, Letv, meizu, such as customer base, this year along with the rise of the market, in order to create more products sell like hot cakes, all the way out of stock at the end of this year, more global leading samsung had knocked at the door of the order. The economic journal,

5. A10X is probably the first 10 nm

, according to the set of network information, A10X use 10 nm probability is very low, we only recommend this article to better understand TSMC process, 10 nm TSMC currently is still in the stage of validation, difficult to mass production by the end of the year.

Not long ago, has repeatedly using the supply chain relationship accurate disclosure apple insider information, an analyst at Guo Ming Ji, claimed that apple's next generation for tablet processor design, will be named A10X or A10X Fusion, and will be forged by TSMC 16 nano technology. You never know, however, Guo Ming Ji also is not very accurate every time. Let's make a guess here, A10X Fusion have 10 nm process may be?

According to the above information, apple's next generation A10X nine times out of ten used 16 nm FinFET + technology, apple continues to optimize the core architecture is given priority to, in order to get a higher processing performance, or integrate higher performance of GPU, further reducing power consumption and so on. TSMC has been clear, however, is work overtime to 10 nm manufacturing process at the end of 2016 or early 2017 can be applied to the chip production.

If apple wants to the Pro line for the next generation of update once again leap significance, is supposed to be the preferred nano technology to create more advanced 10 A10X chips.

Existing 16 nm chip area is a problem

By just the end of the conference, we learned that apple's latest A10 Fusion internal into 3.3 billion transistors. No accident, should be by 16 nm TSMC FinFET + technology, the chip area should be small.

Why say A10 Fusion area is not small? Review apple's A8 chip, then USES is 20 nanometers in TSMC manufacture process, because the plug into the 2 billion transistors, increased to 89 square millimeters. TSMC 16 nano technology for reduce the chip area does not provide any improvement, A9 chip has increased to 104.5 square millimeter, so crammed into more transistors A10 Fusion to a rough estimate its chip area probably around 147 square millimeters.

For smart phones, this chip was very large, even the Intel for notebook computer processor is not so big. You may ask, what does this have to do with A10X? The performance of the pursuit is stronger than the A10 A10X will consider more core GPU graphics processor unit, or CPU to put this, if apple really intend to do so, still based on TSMC nano building A10X chip, finished product chip may even more than 150 square millimeters, to know A9X chip area is quite big, 147 square millimeters.

Believe that apple also do not want to own A series of chip area is bigger, and certainly not low cost.

10 nanometers to solve the above problems

Compared to the current 16 TSMC nanotechnology, if the use of more advanced 10 nanotechnology to produce the same A10X chip, chip area is significantly reduced.

TSMC has said that its latest 10 nano technology, will allow the chip design in the same area of the chip into the more the number of transistors, or more specifically, a given region into about twice the original number of transistors. And, more importantly, also provide with 16 nm TSMC FinFET + craft contrast two Numbers, the first is in the case of constant power consumption performance improved by 18%, the second is on the basis of the performance of the power consumption can be reduced almost 40%.

If apple nano technology design based on 10 A10X chip, the number of graphics kernel can easily increase, compared to the current A9X 12 nuclear, A10X GPU is expected from up to 16 core even more. In addition, apple still can pass into more transistors to easily upgrade CPU performance, so as to realize the CPU and GPU performance improved.

So, after 10 nanometers much easier on the performance, and new technology of the A10X chip area is reduced, and from 16 offset migration to 10 nano technology to increase cost, even may be more cheaper.

For now, however, is most likely to hinder the A10X using 10 nanometers, not cost problem, but the capacity factor, after all, the more the more complex and advanced production co., LTD. Now 16 nm TSMC technology already quite mature, it is well known, and even the mass production of roa also need not worry too much.

And, of course, 16 nm TSMC FinFET process after the first trial production, apple immediately choose to use the technology to build A9 chip, so when the TSMC announced after 10 nanometers can produce A10X directly USES is not impossible. Crucially, designed for the production of chip orders is not very big, is much less than the iPhone, small production yield of natural control better.

Apple's strict to the requirement of the Pro

After apple responsible for hardware and chip design technical director Johnny, rocky (Johny Srouji) also said 12.9 inches of the Pro in the spring of 2015 the project carry A8X chip, but was delayed because there is no ideal desired. When the executive explains, if based on the performance of the Pro A8X chip is not enough strong, especially in front of the iPhone 6 s (after tests show that the iPhone 6 s and 6 s Plus A9 chip A8X faster than the Air 2).

Dismantling partial iPhone 7 use Intel baseband chips; 7

So, when Johnny, Loki and his team decided to prepare a more high-end chip, and delayed the release of Pro. Everything comes to him who waits, only after 6 months, a rival desktop PC chip A9X has completed the development level, the satisfied with the performance test and many aspects have been prepared, the Pro finally debut in the fall of 2015.

, in other words, the next generation of the Pro apple must be planned, the fastest in the first half of next year, according to apple's high demand on chip performance standards, instead of A10X not impossible using the latest technology, plus the apple internal r&d effort, once again to this new mobile processors reach the highest level within the industry.

The performance and power consumption are good

Anyway, from 16 nm to 10 nm, because the cost problem may affect apple's decision, but TSMC does suggest that the more advanced process technology superiority on the performance and power consumption, thus not move before the sword in the underlying architecture, also more conducive to apple through the new technology to squeeze more performance.

In a word, no matter whether apple eventually decided to adopt 10 nanometers, A10X Fusion will be this year monster mobile chips, apple chip design strength, no doubt, but the transition of 10 nanometers obviously have more advantages in performance and power consumption.