Apple orders A16 SoC production from TSMC plant in United States

[Redaktion]

TSMC, on of the most popular chip manufacturers in the world, has apparently fired up fabrication in the United States. Its first chip is somewhat surprising: the Apple A16 SoC, which powered the iPhone 14 Pro. This may point to the specifications of the upcoming iPhone SE 4.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Apple-orders-A16-SoC-production-from-TSMC-plant-in-United-States.890528.0.html

[t4n0n]

This is not feasible.

The news reports from April showed that the plant was still under construction. Not to mention the fact, the future Arizona plant engineers, who were sent over to Taiwan for a year to train, didn't know what they were doing, because they didn't speak Chinese.

And yet this guy is claiming that in a mere five months, not only are they producing a leading 5nm node for Apple, but they're also already achieving yields that are comparable to the production facilities in Taiwan? It typically takes at least a year for any production to ramp up to high yields - and that's for the experienced chip engineers in Taiwan who have been continuously doing this for over a decade, like clockwork (you know, the ones that also have like 12 hour working days, 6 days a week). Like I said, it's simply not plausible that this could have been achieved already at the Arizona production facilities.

The only official quote he has from anyone actually at TSMC is "The Arizona project is proceeding as planned with good progress."

If they had actually achieved this, you'd be hearing it from every American mainstream media news network, not to mention in every speech by Joe Biden.