The Apple Car processor will be optimized from the A12 Bionic and is expected to still be manufactured by TSMC

Recently, the Apple Car issue has been the focus of hot discussions in the market. Now, the market’s attention has also begun to focus on the supply of various components of the Apple Car, and the first thing to be mentioned is the current status of the processor to be used in the Apple Car. According to foreign reports, for the application of Apple Car, Apple will prepare to launch an improved version of the previous A12 Bionic processor for use in Apple Car.

The report pointed out that Apple’s A12 Bionic processor, launched in 2018, is the world’s first 7nm process processor. After its launch, it was first installed in the iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max and iPhone XR launched by Apple that year, and then in the 2019 iPad Air, iPad Mini and iPad 2020 released in 2020. The CPU part is designed with a 6-core architecture, with 2 large cores and 4 small cores. According to Apple’s official instructions, the performance of the A12 Bionic processor is 15% higher than that of the previous generation A11 Bionic processor.

The processor that Apple is expected to use on the Apple Car is expected to be optimized by the A12 Bionic processor, which is temporarily named the C1 processor. According to the relevant specifications of the A12 Bionic processor, the performance of Apple’s latest A14 Bionic processor is outdated. However, if used on the Apple Car, it is still advanced. The reason is that the A12 Bionic processor has 6.9 billion transistors and consumes about 3.5W of energy. Compared with Tesla’s self-driving chip, which has 6 billion transistors, the A12 Bionic processor consumes 36W of energy. Performance is still excellent. That’s not counting the performance of the C1 processor that Apple will optimize for later.

The report also said that although Samsung already has experience in using the 7nm process to produce the self-driving car processor Exynos Auto V9. However, based on the fact that the Apple A12 Bionic processor was originally produced by TSMC, it is expected that the C1 processor of the Apple Car will still be handed over to TSMC for OEM production. Because previous market news pointed out that Apple Car will start mass production in 2024, the C1 processor is expected to enter mass production earlier, which will continue to boost TSMC’s future revenue momentum.