Apple’s A6 Processor Begins Trial Production, Says Taipei Report

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., Ltd. (TSMC), the world’s largest semiconductor foundry by market shares, has started trial production of Apple’s upcoming A6 processor, according to a Taipei source.

Softpedia recently reported that Dan Heyler, a semiconductor analyst with Merrill Lynch in Taipei, had a chat with the China-based Commercial Times and told the newspaper that TSMC would most likely be producing the "A6" processors for Apple in 2012. Full story here.

The trial production is underway “in cooperation with Apple Inc.”, according to CENS.com whose industry sources have said that “the production design [will] be taped out in the first quarter of next year and [is] scheduled to be publicly unveiled in the second quarter at the earliest.”

If history is any indication, the A6 should be the centerpiece of an iPad 3 tablet, or the iPhone 6, or both.

The chip maker, allegedly chosen by Apple to replace Samsung as the sole manufacturer of the brains for iOS-powered devices, has reportedly applied its newest 28-nanometer process and 3D stacking technologies to produce the next-generation processor.

According to the report, the A6 will undergo TSMC’s cutting-edge silicon interposer and bump on trace (BOT) methodologies. The chip is based on the ARM architecture.

Though the company is yet to comment on the deal, the manufacturing is expected to yield considerable momentum for TSMC’s business growth starting next year, industry insiders told the Taipei publication.

The reason why TSMC hadn’t yet built business ties with Apple, despite being capable of handling processor production as demanded by the Cupertino tech giant, is that they had limited production lines, the same insiders said.

These had been almost fully booked by partners like Nvidia and Qualcomm. However, due to e depression experienced recently in the industry, TSMC was able to stand out,

Although this is cited as the primary reason for the recently closed deal with Apple, the Mac maker may also have tapped TSMC as a result of their legal spat with Samsung.

The Korean electronics manufacturer is seeing its phones and tablets banned in most of Europe because of striking similarities between them and Apple’s portable lineup.

Advanced Semiconductor Engineering Inc, Taiwan’s leading semiconductor testing and packaging company, is also expected to benefit from the A6 processor production.

According to the same industry sources, it was ASE who helped TSMC achieve their 3D chip-packaging technology, and therefore the former is “very likely to snap up the order for processor packaging in the future.”