Teardowns

Apple’s A7 Processor is Made by Samsung

There was mighty speculation among the internet as to the manufacturer of Apple’s new A7 processor. We uncovered it last night during the iPhone 5s teardown, but now Chipworks has taken it one step further. Through the magic of decapping an IC, their internal shots revealed the A7 to be made by Samsung.

From Chipworks: “We have confirmed through early analysis that the device is fabricated at Samsung’s Foundry and we will confirm process type and node later today as analysis continues. That being said, we suspect we will see Samsungs 28 nm Hi K metal Gate (HKMG) being used. We have observed this same process in the Samsung Exynos Application processor used in the Galaxy S IV. Our engineers will be deprocessing the Apple A7 as soon as they can to confirm this or to provide different information.”

Chipworks die photo of the A7 processor
A7 die photo, courtesy of Chipworks