The fates of Apple and Taiwanese semiconductor producer TSCM have grown inextricably intertwined for the reason that creation of the iPhone. As every subsequent era of iPhone hurtled previous the technological capabilities of its predecessor, the processors that powered them grew more and more advanced and specialised — to the purpose that, right now, TSCM has change into the one chip fab on the planet with the requisite instruments and know-how to really construct them. In his new e book, Chip War: The Fight for the World’s Most Critical Technology, financial historian Chris Miller examines the rise of processor manufacturing as an economically essential commodity, the nationwide safety implications these international provide chains may pose to America.
Simon & Schuster
Excerpted from Chip War: The Fight for the World’s Most Critical Technology by Chris Miller. Reprinted with permission from Scribner. Copyright 2022.
Apple Silicon
The best beneficiary of the rise of foundries like TSMC was an organization that most individuals don’t even understand designs chips: Apple. The firm Steve Jobs constructed has at all times specialised in {hardware}, nonetheless, so it’s no shock that Apple’s need to excellent its gadgets consists of controlling the silicon inside. Since his earliest days at Apple, Steve Jobs had thought deeply concerning the relationship between software program and {hardware}. In 1980, when his hair almost reached his shoulders and his mustache lined his higher lip, Jobs gave a lecture that requested, “What is software?”
“The only thing I can think of,” he answered, “is software is something that is changing too rapidly, or you don’t exactly know what you want yet, or you didn’t have time to get it into hardware.”
Jobs didn’t have time to get all his concepts into the {hardware} of the first-generation iPhone, which used Apple’s personal iOS working system however outsourced design and manufacturing of its chips to Samsung. The revolutionary new cellphone had many different chips, too: an Intel reminiscence chip, an audio processor designed by Wolfson, a modem to attach with the cell community produced by Germany’s Infineon, a Bluetooth chip designed by CSR, and a sign amplifier from Skyworks, amongst others. All have been designed by different firms.
As Jobs launched new variations of the iPhone, he started etching his imaginative and prescient for the smartphone into Apple’s personal silicon chips. A 12 months after launching the iPhone, Apple purchased a small Silicon Valley chip design agency known as PA Semi that had experience in energy-efficient processing. Soon Apple started hiring among the trade’s finest chip designers. Two years later, the corporate introduced it had designed its personal software processor, the A4, which it used within the new iPad and the iPhone 4. Designing chips as advanced because the processors that run smartphones is dear, which is why most low- and midrange smartphone firms purchase off-the-shelf chips from firms like Qualcomm. However, Apple has invested closely in R&D and chip design services in Bavaria and Israel in addition to Silicon Valley, the place engineers design its latest chips. Now Apple not solely designs the principle processors for many of its gadgets but additionally ancillary chips that run equipment like AirPods. This funding in specialised silicon explains why Apple’s merchandise work so easily. Within 4 years of the iPhone’s launch, Apple was making over 60 p.c of all of the world’s earnings from smartphone gross sales, crushing rivals like Nokia and BlackBerry and leaving East Asian smartphone makers to compete within the low-margin marketplace for low cost telephones.
Like Qualcomm and the opposite chip companies that powered the cell revolution, despite the fact that Apple designs ever extra silicon, it doesn’t construct any of those chips. Apple is well-known for outsourcing meeting of its telephones, tablets, and different gadgets to a number of hundred thousand meeting line employees in China, who’re answerable for screwing and gluing tiny items collectively. China’s ecosystem of meeting services is the world’s finest place to construct digital gadgets. Taiwanese firms, like Foxconn and Wistron, that run these services for Apple in China are uniquely able to churning out telephones, PCs, and different digital. Though the electronics meeting services in Chinese cities like Dongguan and Zhengzhou are the world’s most effective, nonetheless, they aren’t irreplaceable. The world nonetheless has a number of hundred million subsistence farmers who’d fortunately fasten elements into an iPhone for a greenback an hour. Foxconn assembles most of its Apple merchandise in China, but it surely builds some in Vietnam and India, too.
Unlike meeting line employees, the chips inside smartphones are very tough to exchange. As transistors have shrunk, they’ve change into ever more durable to manufacture. The variety of semiconductor firms that may construct modern chips has dwindled. By 2010, on the time Apple launched its first chip, there have been only a handful of cutting-edge foundries: Taiwan’s TSMC, South Korea’s Samsung, and — maybe — GlobalFoundries, relying on whether or not it may reach successful market share. Intel, nonetheless the world’s chief at shrinking transistors, remained centered on constructing its personal chips for PCs and servers slightly than processors for different firms’ telephones. Chinese foundries like SMIC have been attempting to catch up however remained years behind.
Because of this, the smartphone provide chain seems very totally different from the one related to PCs. Smartphones and PCs are each assembled largely in China with high-value elements largely designed within the U.S., Europe, Japan, or Korea. For PCs, most processors come from Intel and are produced at one of many firm’s fabs within the U.S., Ireland, or Israel. Smartphones are totally different. They’re stuffed stuffed with chips, not solely the principle processor (which Apple designs itself), however modem and radio-frequency chips for connecting with mobile networks, chips for WiFi and Bluetooth connections, a picture sensor for the digicam, at the very least two reminiscence chips, chips that sense movement (so your cellphone is aware of while you flip it horizontal), in addition to semiconductors that handle the battery, the audio, and wi-fi charging. These chips make up a lot of the invoice of supplies wanted to construct a smartphone.
As semiconductor fabrication capability migrated to Taiwan and South Korea, so too did the flexibility to provide many of those chips. Application processors, the digital mind inside every smartphone, are largely produced in Taiwan and South Korea earlier than being despatched to China for remaining meeting inside a cellphone’s plastic case and glass display screen. Apple’s iPhone processors are fabricated solely in Taiwan. Today, no firm moreover TSMC has the ability or the manufacturing capability to construct the chips Apple wants. So the textual content etched onto the again of every iPhone — “Designed by Apple in California. Assembled in China”—is very deceptive. The iPhone’s most irreplaceable elements are certainly designed in California and assembled in China. But they’ll solely be made in Taiwan.