Taiwan Economic News is reporting that local Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., Ltd. (TSMC), the world’s largest semiconductor foundry by market shares now, has started trial production of the A6 processor in cooperation with Apple Inc., with the production design to be taped out in the first quarter of next year and scheduled to be publicly unveiled in the second quarter at the earliest, according to industry sources.
TSMC has applied its newest 28-nanometer process and 3D stacking technologies to produce the next-generation processor A6, which is based on the ARM architecture and will undergo TSMC’s cutting-edge silicon interposer and bump on trace (BOT) methodologies. Industry insiders said that the manufacturing will help to pump considerable momentum into TSMC’s business growth starting next year, though the company has yet to comment on the deal for the moment.
We already reported that Apple and TSMC have begun testing in July, however, both reports suggest that the next iPad 3 could be the first to sport the new processor in 2012.
Let us wait and see how this will affect Samsung as Apple keen to shift most of production away from the korean company as Samsung has emerged as Apple’s toughest competitor in the smartphone and tablet market.