A5 Chip in Tweaked Apple TV Still Manufactured by Samsung at 32nm

Apple and Samsung are like husband and wife. They fight every once in a while but they both need each other.

To an end user, a chip maker is just a provider of plumbing and there are many others who can do it . After all, Apple users already use graphics chips made by TSMC and CPUs made by Intel on their Macs, and iPhones and iPads with wireless chips made also by TSMC



Ideally, we would all be using the chips made by the most advanced process available now, which would be Intel, not Samsung. Not that Samsung is a bad chip maker by any means but I suspect the biggest advantage of Samsung is that they have worked together with Apple's engineering team for a long time. Also it's always a big risk when you move your big manufacturing away from your long time supplier.



It's not just a "vain" attempt though. Apple tells Samsung ahead of time what kind of processor they need and what quantity, that could be a valuable information for the competition. Just look at all the noise created by the analysts checking with the suppliers.

A good reason to distance themselves from Samsung don't you think? They are not the only fish in the sea and Apple does not need to feed the Samsung engine any more. They have proven to not be friendly.

If Sammy were to announce that they would henceforth refuse to do any business with Apple, AAPL would drop to around $200.

Apple needs to show some gratitude.

So the 3rd gen with the larger A5 had 1 core disabled right? Does this smaller chip have only 1 core active as well or are they both active this time?

Disappointing to see Eric Slivka using slang words like fabbed.

Some of the writing on MacRumors is fairly poor, but I've always found Eric's articles to be very well-written.

Kind of quirky to label it A5.

Perhaps same general functionality but a hand tuned transistor layout for most of the sub-components for the CPUs but still same tweaked ARM A9 basic functionality. Maybe a more efficiently implemented GPU that takes less space. in that context it would make sense to keep the A5 label but different.

They could dump a core if though that AppleTV didn't need it. ( and anything else that isn't used on an AppleTV. ) Effectively an optimized for only AppleTV SoC. As the volumes get bigger some of these products can get their own SoC if Apple has enough designers on staff and the optimizations pay off in lower foundry costs.

Same process means this will be cheaper to make on very mature processes (i.e.,g very high yields. ).

when you manufacture CPU's, most never come out perfect. it used to be you junked the bad ones. now you use lasers to disable circuitry and sell it as a lower model SKU. Nvidia and ATI have been doing this for years. different GPU SKU will be the same generation but with different core counts, different memory pipelines, etc.

Intel would just rate better manufactured CPU's for higher speeds. in the 90's people would buy 133MHz or lower Pentiums and over clock them. most times they ran perfectly because Intel just needed some lower end SKU's and marked a CPU for a lower rating.

the Apple TV is an amazing product because the A5 chip in there is a manufacturing reject. instead of throwing it out along with the money it cost to make it, apple created a product around. doesn't matter that the margins on it are tiny. it saves money just by using up "bad" CPU's

and since its a low volume product apple can use it as a test bed for new manufacturing processes like its doing now.

Disappointing to see Eric Slivka using slang words like fabbed.

Some of the writing on MacRumors is fairly poor, but I've always found Eric's articles to be very well-written.