New Video Provides Rare Look Inside an Apple Silicon Lab

CNBC today shared an in-depth report and video about Apple's chipmaking efforts. While much of the information may be familiar to Apple enthusiasts, the video provides a rare look inside one of Apple's chip testing labs in California, and it includes commentary from Apple's chipmaking head Johny Srouji and hardware engineering chief John Ternus.


The report recaps Apple's in-house chipmaking history, and it also touches on what's next for the company, although Apple predictably had little to say about its future plans. Read the report and watch the video to learn more.

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Top Rated Comments

citysnaps Avatar
24 months ago

Its nice to see how the amazing products we get to use are made.
Positive comments about Apple are frowned upon here.

Next time take a swing at Apple, perhaps claiming they don't innovate anymore. That's always a crowd-pleaser and you get forum cred as a bonus. A win-win!
Score: 13 Votes (Like | Disagree)
dgdosen Avatar
24 months ago
+1 for production values... Somebody is good at their craft
Score: 10 Votes (Like | Disagree)
antiprotest Avatar
24 months ago
Apple chip so efficient it's like double the RAM.



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Score: 10 Votes (Like | Disagree)
deebinem Avatar
24 months ago

And then you start it and already in the second shot the white is off. And then the sound problems and not so great editing start. It's o.k. for a news segment, but could have used a little more time/polish, imho.
Don't worry, the original, restored vision is coming soon:



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Score: 9 Votes (Like | Disagree)
joeblough Avatar
24 months ago

An In-house chipmaking factory/Lab? They should call it the iLab!
it's not a chipmaking factory. what they are doing in there is post-silicon device verification. when you design one of these chips, the timing parameters for the process are good to a junction temperature of, say, 85C and down to 0C. if you make it colder or hotter than this, it can and will malfunction. so what they are doing here is checking to make sure the packaged silicon matches the timing parameters that were used when the chips were taped out by heating and cooling the die. usually there is some margin designed in, and the process varies as well, so you end up with fast silicon, slow silicon and typical silicon. they change the temperature, voltage and clock rates to explore that whole space and characterize the silicon that TSMC gives to them.

usually they also need to verify the whole system at hot and cold temperatures as well. but here, since they had a heater/cooler applied to the chip only, they must be interested in how the SoC device itself reacts to temperature changes.
Score: 9 Votes (Like | Disagree)
sparkinstx Avatar
24 months ago
Well, since they're fabless, they're really a chip designer, not a chipmaker.
Score: 8 Votes (Like | Disagree)