Where next for Apple’s chips?
If it is correct that Apple will skip TSMC’s 1.6nm process and then climb aboard the 1.4nm and 1nm chips, we could see the two big processor development chapters between now and 2030. This year we can see it introduce 2nm chips, with 1.4nm to follow probably in 2028 and the huge leap to sub-1nm processors to follow in 2030-31.
As these chips will be deployed across Apple’s hardware platforms, including within new designs we don’t know about yet, it means you can anticipate highly significant performance gains wherever in the ecosystem you happen to sit. Whether you’re looking at the next-generation MacBook Neo, MacBook Pro, iPhone or iPhone e, you’ll see impressive performance gains unlocked in all into the last half of this decade.
Those performance gains, combined with improved energy consumption, allows Apple’s hardware designers to work towards thinner, lighter and smaller devices in a range of design configurations — some of which could not have existed before. (Think about spectacles with the kind of performance you once got from a Mac.) The way ahead is clear. Apple has a wide open road for chip design, and while tensions between today’s US and China could derail some of these plans, TSMC’s continued investment in fabrication capacity in the US might help mitigate against even that potential calamity.
