Apple Will Help TSMC to Be in the Leading Position in the Next Era

On March 16, Apple reportedly launched its latest computer, the Mac Studio, last week, and the hot product at the launch was the processor chip that serves as the core.

The chip, called M1 Ultra, is not a new product. It consists of two of Apple's previously introduced M1 Max chips spliced together to provide greater performance. M1 Max has been used in the high-end MacBook Pro notebooks. the M1 Ultra's biggest technological advancement is the chip splicing technology. This innovation could be bad news for Intel, a chip giant in the midst of a renaissance.

Apple has given this chip stitching technology the trendy internal name UltraFusion, but analysts believe that this technology relies heavily on the underlying chip manufacturing process from TSMC. TSMC is Apple's longtime manufacturing partner, helping Apple produce the chips that are at the heart of the iPhone, iPad, and Mac computers.

Analysts believe that Apple is the first customer of TSMC's new manufacturing technology. This could help TSMC boost capacity based on this technology and further optimize the process, eventually using the new process for other customers, such as AMD and Nvidia. Neither of these companies has yet announced plans to use the technology. Intel, on the other hand, is also betting its revival plans on advanced chip manufacturing technology.

Apple's UltraFusion belongs to a kind of advanced packaging technology. TSMC and Intel and other companies use this technology to package multiple chips or chip modules into a single finished semiconductor. This aspect of the technology has become key to the rapid manufacture of chips while reducing manufacturing costs. This technology is currently used in chips for data center servers and high-end desktops and has improved the economics of large chips in these products.

Apple's M1 Ultra is not TSMC's first foray into advanced packaging technology, but this may become a more important technology sub-category in the future. For TSMC, getting it right in Apple chip products could help drive familiarity with the technology among other device makers, as Apple is TSMC's flagship customer with high product shipments.

Jan Vardaman, president of TechSearch International, said: "People don't like to be the first to take the plunge, but like to see the technology being used by others. So once people see someone using new technology, the new technology will generate more interest."

TSMC declined to comment on specific chips and customers but said packaging technology is "critical to product performance, functionality and cost.

Intel's lead in producing the world's fastest processors has been surpassed by companies such as TSMC. As a result, Intel last year announced a revival of technology, opening its own factories to OEM chips for external customers. Intel will call this business "Intel chip manufacturing services". However, Intel does not yet have the technology to manufacture chips with the same speed and energy efficiency as TSMC. Intel declined to comment on this article.

However, analysts believe that Intel's advanced packaging technology is competitive with TSMC. For example, Intel has used its chip stitching technology to attract customers such as Amazon AWS. AWS said it will use Intel's services to produce customized chips for AWS data center servers.

Strategy Analytics analyst Sravan Kundojjala (Sravan Kundojjala) pointed out that as one of Intel's flagship technologies, EMIB (Embedded Multi-Core Interconnect Bridging) uses bridging technology to connect chip components. Analysts believe that the TSMC technology being used by Apple, which integrates fan-out local silicon interconnects, also connects two chips by bridging. Compared to the use of large silicon wafers to integrate all the chipsets together, these two new technologies are more cost-effective.

To be sure, Intel and TSMC's bridge technology has many differences, and each has made many trade-offs. TSMC's technology supports more connections between chips compared to Intel's technology, which is important for the rapid transfer of large amounts of data. But Intel's approach is simpler in terms of production.

Real World Technologies analyst David Kanter (David Kanter) said, "Intel wants to design a product that can meet a lot of demand without supply chain problems." He noted that Intel already uses this technology on its Sapphire Rapids server chips, which could ship in the tens of millions of pieces.

Wadman noted that there is no definitive data on how the cost of TSMC's new technology compares to Intel's. She said that the technical details of different advanced packaging technologies are much different. This is mainly because chip designers usually consider technologies that meet their goals, and TSMC and Intel do not compete head-to-head on these technologies.

Apple may also have added its own special technology to TSMC's advanced packaging technology, which will never be offered to TSMC's other customers. But analysts believe that for now, Apple is playing a key role in helping bring new technologies to market. Apple has also learned valuable lessons about how to stitch together chips and chip modules into larger finished semiconductors, which could help the company save money in the future.

Ben Bajarin, head of consumer technology at Creative Strategies, said, "Going forward, not relying exclusively on cutting-edge chip manufacturing processes will become a more economically aggressive way to design and architect chips, even for basic chip modules."

Related News

1、MediaTek, Qualcomm announce joining Russia sanctions

2、Automotive chips rose across the board!

3、Apple M1 Ultra -- The Technology Behind the Chip Interconnection

4、Foxconn Announces Investment of $9 Billion to Build A Chip Factory in Saudi Arabia

5、Japanese Companies Increase Investment in Power Semiconductors