Qualcomm (Allegedly) Ships 176 Million 5G Modems To Apple - Becomes TSMC's Largest 7nm Customer

Qualcomm'south Snapdragon 7nm 5G modem (right) and the QTM 525 mmWave antennas pictured above are some of the company's products Credit: Qualcomm Incorporated)

San Diego chip giant Qualcomm Incorporated has quietly become Taiwanese fab TSMC's largest customer of the latter's 7nm semiconductor manufacturing procedure node suggest reports sourced past Sina Finance. Qualcomm, which sells smartphone application processors and modems, amid other products, won a big contract for the modems of Apple's (NASDAQ:AAPL)latest flagship smartphone later the pair settled their licensing disputes last year. These modems will be manufactured on the 7nm process node, which is one of TSMC's latest manufacturing technologies.

The reports suggest that attributable to the massive influx of orders from the Cupertino tech behemothic, Qualcomm should become TSMC's largest client for the 7nm procedure. The details reveal that the company is ready to provide 80,000 wafers to Apple tree for the iPhone only during the fourth quarter.

Apple's Chip Orders Continue To Do good TSMC As Demand Expands To Older Manufacturing Processes

Looking at the estimates provided in the report, it'due south possible to speculate on Apple's demand projections for the iPhones during this quarter, which will inevitably see the company gene in demand for the twelvemonth's highly-anticipated holiday season. Despite coming at a time when populations all over the globe continue to battle the devastating after-furnishings of a pandemic, the 2020 iPhones might non disappoint Apple tree in terms of sales figures, with a report from analyst Ming-Chi Kuo suggesting that the Cupertino tech giant had managed to sell upwardly to ii million units of the lineup during the first 24 hours after pre-orders opened. Qualcomm (Allegedly) Ships 176 Million 5G Modems To Apple

Most, if not all of TSMC'southward leading-edge processes use 12-inch wafers which are then cut into private chips later. Such a wafer has an area of roughly 72965 mm² and if we are able to decide the surface area of the Snapdragon X55, then it's possible to wager a guess at how many 2020 iPhones Apple might have ordered for this quarter, or as you'll see below, for a longer fourth dimension period.

While Qualcomm does not explicitly state the Snapdragon X55'south surface area and teardowns of smartphones with the modem do not mention information technology either, the area for Huawei'due south Balong 5000 sub-6 5G modem has been revealed by a teardown conducted past TechInsights. Their analysis of the Mate xx Ten 5G reveals that the Balong 5000 has a die size of nine.82mm x 8.74mm which translates into a surface area of 85.83 mm².

Slide 16 from Qualcomm's Analyst Day presentation 2019 given past its vice president engineering and main engineering science officer Dr. James Thompson, revealed that that the Snapdragon X55 is two.half-dozen times smaller than Huawei'south Balong 5000 5G modem. Image: Qualcomm Incorporated

Analysis Reveals Interesting Conundrum Well-nigh Apple'south Alleged 5G Modem Deliveries

At its 2019 Analyst Day, Qualcomm's main technology officeholder and vice president engineering science Dr. James Thompson highlighted the strengths of the company's Snapdragon X55 over competing products from Intel Corporation and Huawei. Dr. Thompson's presentation revealed that the Snapdragon X55 is 2.6x smaller than the Balong 5000, and combining this approximate with TechInsight'due south discovery reveals that the Snapdragon X55 might have a surface surface area of 33 mm².

Since a 12-inch wafer has a surface surface area of 72965 mm², and the X55'south derived surface expanse turns out to be 33 mm², it's highly likely that a single wafer that TSMC shipped to Qualcomm for the iPhone has 2211 Snapdragon X55 modems in information technology. Combining this with the alleged 80,000 wafer shipments reveals that Apple might take received as much as 176 million such modems from Qualcomm.

This figure falls nearly in line with estimates in a pre-pandemic report by Bloomberg (the publication that is yet to either recant or indisputably prove how the security of Apple and other tech companies' information centers were compromised via microchip implants) that claimed how Apple had hoped it would ship 200 1000000 iPhones in 2020 equally information technology embraced 5G net connectivity for the iconic smartphone lineup.

In a more than contempo report, Taiwanese publication Appledaily had reported that the company expected to send 120 million 5G iPhones in 2020 - a figure that is either wrong or believed that the shipments were for Apple'south fiscal year 2020 which will stop in September next year. JP Morgan'south estimates at the time pegged 5G and non-5G iPhone shipments at 198 million, and both of these show maybe the report from Sina Finance is overestimating the shipments that Qualcomm has made to Apple.

Another caption is that perhaps Apple is expecting solid performance from this year's iPhones next year as well, every bit economies start to recover after having taken an unprecedented beating this year. However, given how the company prefers a leaner inventory model, courtesy of C.E.O. Tim Cook's supply chain wizardry, even if such a decision has been made, it wouldn't take been made lightly. Finally, for Apple to send 176 1000000 5G iPhones would mean solid performance from a brand new lineup, and perhaps the company might have hedged its orders on the possibility of using the Snapdragon X55 in future, yet-to-exist-launched devices also.

Source: https://wccftech.com/qualcomm-176-million-modems-ship-tsmc-apple/

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