Apple A5 Processors Are Made By Samsung... For Now

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Here’s a shock for all you Apple fans – but Apple doesn’t make the Apple A5 processor. Instead, it’s manufactured by an outside firm. Samsung made the Apple A4 processor used in the iPad and iPhone 4 – but there was a rumor that independent TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company) would take over the helm for the Apple A5. Not so much, at first for the first Apple A5 processors, as folks have torn it down and looked deep inside the Apple A5 and found signs that Samsung manufactured it.

The key reason as to why Apple would switch from Samsung to TSMC (not that TSMC isn’t a bad fab – they make processors for NVIDIA and AMD) is that Samsung competes with Apple in the mobile space, mainly with Samsung’s increasing Android offers going head to head with Apple’s iOS products.

The folks at Chipworks tore down a new Apple A5 processor and looked at it with an electron microscope or something and found that the logic gates in the processor give it away that the new A5 was made by Samsung. So no switch to TSMC – yet.

Will Apple switch to TSMC in the middle of the Apple A5′s lifespan? It’s not completely impossible, but considering that Samsung already has set up their fabs for the Apple A5 and is probably churning them out, I really can’t imagine Apple getting a new fab to start making them. There’s a possibility that the Apple A6 or whatever could be made by TSMC, though.

References found in the iOS 4.3 code has modders believing that the Apple A5 will be included in the upcoming iPhone 5.