A new report says that Apple is going to manufacture the A20 chip for iPhone 18 on the 2nm process.
After Improved Yields by TSMC, Apple to Likely Make Jump to 2nm Process for A20 Chip in iPhone 18
This isn’t the first time we’re hearing this news. Back in September, Ming-Chi Kuo said the iPhone 18 will use 2nm chips, while the iPhone 17 will stick to 3nm.
In October, we got more details regarding the iPhone 18, and that included the use of 12GB of RAM and the 2nm A20 chip, once again.
Fast forward to present day and Ming-Chi Kuo is stating once again that Apple’s A20 chip will be based on the 2nm process and TSMC will be manufacturing these chips.
Apple plans to use 3nm chips with the iPhone 17 lineup, but we will still see performance improvements over the iPhone 16 since the process has been well refined over time.
According to Ming-Chi Kuo, TSMC had 60-70% yields of 2nm chips around 3 months ago, but that number has improved significantly since then.
What this means is, when the iPhone 18 goes into production next year, we can expect the process to be refined enough for use on a large scale.
While the iPhone 17 will definitely be faster compared to the iPhone 16 even on 3nm, it will only be when Apple makes the jump to 2nm that we will start seeing significant performance boosts.
It will be interesting to see when the 2nm chips will start making their way to the Mac and iPad. If there’s one place where these chips will truly shine, it’s on a desktop scale.
