The current high-end chips have been insulated from the cost performance. No, TSMC's advanced process is too expensive, so expensive that even apples can't afford to use.
Guo Mingxi, an analyst at Tianfeng International, who predicts that Apple has always been more reliable, recently broke the news that only two Pro models of iPhones this year will be upgraded to the latest A16 chip, and the lower-end iPhone 14 continues to use last year's A15 chip.
That is to say, the iPhone 14 and iPhone 13 chips are exactly the same, which gives the cook a problem, iPhone 14 if it is exactly the same as the previous generation, what is the significance of the number plus one, how to persuade the fruit powder to pay for it? It is said that the difference between the iPhone 14 and the iPhone 13 is that the A 15 of the former is a full-blood version, and the latter is a castrated version.
It is estimated that everyone's reaction to this is, and this kind of operation?
However, the A16 is only the standard of the flagship iPhone. In the past two years, Apple has opened up the product grade by using a knife on the chip, which is a previous crime: on the basis of the M1 chip, it has increased the number of different CPUs, GPUs and NPUs, and has made five versions of the small cup (M1 castrated version), the middle cup (M1 full blood version), the large cup (M1 Pro), the super cup (M1 MAX) and the ultra-large cup (M1 Ultra), and the price gap is so large that people are jaw-dropping. Therefore, the use of different A series chips in the iPhone 14 and Pro series is also a routine operation.
The point of the problem is why Apple is not willing to use the latest chip on the entire iPhone series, you know, the iPhone in front of the Android phone, the most proud is the powerful chip performance, the use of old chips, want to maintain the high brand premium of the iPhone is a difficulty factor.
The answer is that TSMC's advanced process is too expensive, so expensive that it is difficult to use the A 16 chip for the entire iPhone 14. How expensive are TSMC's advanced process processes? Neither Apple nor TSMC said (it was strange to say so), but AMD, one of the latter's big customers, has said that AMD's Zen 4 processor will increase in price in 2022, because the production cost has nearly doubled after the manufacturing process was upgraded from 7nm to 5nm.
Specific to Apple, the cost of the A16 chip will only be higher than that of the AMD Zen 4. We can calculate an approximation.
The die size of the A15 increased from 87.76 square millimeters square millimeters of the A14 to 107.7 square millimeters, and the transistors increased from 11.8 billion to 15 billion, according to this increase, the die area of the A16 is about 132 square millimeters, which is a considerable size for mobile phone chips.
TSMC 4nm process (actually the 4th generation of 5nm improved version), the yield is about 75%, because the A16 die area is greater than A15, so the yield will be lower than A15, according to 70% estimation, a 12-inch wafer can cut out about 335 pieces of usable die, A15 can cut 478 pieces of usable die.
According to information released by the Center for Security and Emerging Technologies (CSET) at Georgetown University's Walsh School of Foreign Affairs, TSMC charges a processing fee of $17,000 for manufacturing a 5nm process 12-inch wafer. As mentioned above, TSMC has four improved versions of 5nm, and the price is definitely more expensive than the next. The latest news is that TSMC raised the price of Apple by 8-10%, compared to other customers, this price increase is small, which is to give a "friendship discount price", which estimates that Apple uses the 4th generation of improved 5nm 12-inch wafers, TSMC to charge processing costs of about $18530, spread to each A16 chip die cost of about $55.31.
But is this just the cost of hardware, and chip design does not cost money? The design cost of the 5nm chip is $542.2 million, and the average design cost per A16 is $10.844 according to the information reported by the media that Apple has stockpiled 50 million A16 chips.
The diie cannot be used immediately, because it is very fragile, a few particles of dust will strike, can not be connected with other equipment, need to add protective covers and leads, this process is completed by the chip packaging plant.
Chip packaging also comes at a cost. In the chip industry value chain, the package is at the bottom of the smile curve, accounting for 5-25% of the total chip cost, considering that the A16 chip is a high-end product, using the most advanced manufacturing process in the industry, the packaging process will not be low-end, and the packaging cost can only be estimated to the highest: 25%, that is, the cost of each A16 package is about 22 US dollars.
Based on comprehensive estimates, the total cost of an A16 chip is around $88. How much does this data weigh in the iPhone's bill of materials cost?
After the iPhone 13 was launched, the Japanese media joined hands with dismantling expert Fomalhaut Techno Solutions to dismantle an iPhone 13 Pro Max. The disassembly shows that the display is the most expensive component of this phone, costing $105, followed by the camera module, which costs $77, and the famous A15 chip ranks third with a cost of $45. Including component costs, the Pro Max's material cost is $438, or 36.5% of the phone's retail price.
That is to say, the A16 chip using TSMC's fourth-generation improved 5nm process process costs 1.96 times that of the A15, nearly doubling, ranking directly from the third row to the second. Because the material cost of the iPhone is a hard cost and has been rising steadily for many years, Apple basically will not do the stupid thing of subtraction on the material, so the increased cost of the A16 chip can only be digested by the iPhone itself. In the iPhone product line, the pro and non-Pro market price difference of 2,000 yuan (starting price) yuan, obviously the Pro series can digest the soaring cost of A16 chips, and the non-Pro series is difficult to bear.
Therefore, for the chef, to maintain the current gross profit margin of the iPhone, the best choice is the flagship iPhone 14 Pro series using the most expensive A16 chip, continue to play the high-end high-performance card, iPhone 14 uses a cheap A15 chip, maintain cost-effective, and domestic Android flagship frontal just.
In other words, Apple is not unwilling to use A16 chips in the full series of iPhone 14, but TSMC's advanced process is not cheap at all, so expensive that the iPhone can only be used in the flagship series.
Speaking of which, the story of the expensive process of advanced chip technology is not over, and the follow-up plot development is: it will be more expensive!
Or according to the information released by the Center for Security and Emerging Technologies (CSET) of Walsh Diplomatic College of Georgetown University, TSMC's 12-inch wafer using the 3nm process has a foundry cost of $30,000, which is about 1.75 times that of 5nm. At that point, Apple really probably won't be able to afford it.
It is precisely because the advanced process of chips is too expensive, and then work this, but it is a bit more than worth the loss, and it is necessary to open up another road.
On March 2, Intel, AMD, Arm, TSMC, Samsung, Sun Moonlight, Qualcomm, Microsoft, Google Cloud and Meta and other 10 giants jointly launched a new interconnection standard UCIe, this standard is to put it bluntly, the advanced process is becoming more and more expensive at the moment, from the process process to the chip package, through a similar way to build blocks, the multiple small chips are packaged together to achieve the performance of a whole piece of advanced process chip, thereby reducing costs.
Apple's M1 Ultra is packaged with two M1 MAX chips, while the M1 MAX is packaged by multiple M1 Pro packages, and the M1 Pro is packaged by multiple M1 packages, in other words, although the M1 series of chips is various, it is actually a different number of M1 packages.
In short, everyone is changing the method to continue moore's law. It is foreseeable that after 3nm, under the framework of existing materials and technologies, it is difficult to make substantial progress in the advanced process of chips, and the technology is basically over, which is also the reason why TSMC joined UCIe, this action is indeed worth pondering.
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Resources:
"2 times more than 7nm chip TSMC 5nm process is super expensive: Ryzen 7000 price to rise? Fast Tech 2018
"Package the TSMC 4nm production capacity, Apple A16 chip is coming?" "/Wisdom stuff
Bypass the blockade of advanced processes! China's "small chip" standard draft will be announced soon"/core stuff
"iPhone 13 detailed disassembly, part cost exposure" / semiconductor industry observation