A9 Is TSMC 16nm FinFET and Samsung Fabbed
chipworks.com
chipworks.com
> From a benchmarking point of view, the smaller die size shows a leadership in technology scaling for Samsung.
Almost certainly true.
> On the other hand, for Apple to go through all the trouble of dual-sourcing a custom designed part and launching on day one with both parts, suggests major sourcing problems.
Well... maybe. Or alternatively this is Apple throwing their cash around for long term leverage. They certainly can pay to have the initial design done on two different processes. And having done so, it puts TSMC and Samsung (and GF, who shares Samsung's process and would be an obvious third source) into a terrible bind: Apple can squeeze them with the constant (and credible!) threat of flight to a competitor.
See previous coverage of NVIDIA's rocky relationship with TSMC for an example of something Apple is probably trying to avoid.
The end user shouldn't worry, or even think, in what foundry was the chip fabricated in because it doesn't really matter if you are not the engineering team.
Similarly, I'm not sure how you expect reliability not to be affected by process; of course it'll be. But how often have you heard of a chip failing after it passes initial validation (something presumably apple does have a hand in)? It's not going to matter.
Apple does these kind of things for two main reasons: Because they have the money and because they want to test both fabrication processes for future products
The differences between a 14nm process and a 16nm process are quite minimal mostly because one process can offer some advantages over the other one. For example: it's expected that the smaller process has bigger leakage current, increasing power consumption, while it's expected for the bigger process to produce more heat.
In the end, you could say that if you sum the advantages and disadvantages of both, you will not reach any conclusion if you are not the engineering team looking for extreme optimization and with Apple's resources at your disposal.
It's just hard to come to a concrete conclusion from a consumer's point of view.
And even "16nm" something of a marketing term - something tiny feature in there is at 16nm resolution, but lots of other things are larger. And which things are how large, of course, also matters...
Now... it's true that all the media reporting so far seems to treat TSMC's 14nm and Samsung/GlobalFoundries's 16nm processes as "essentially the same from a design perspective" (though both seem to lag Intel's 14nm in density). But until parts reach the market we won't actually know.
Actually, if they are dual sourcing the same chip from a 14nm process and from a 16nm process as well, it's very likely that they had to use different analog designs, so the 14nm chip probably has advantages that the 16nm chip has and vice-versa.
It's pointless for the end user to nitpick differences of the same chip in 2 equivalent processes when the software is going to mask everything out.
And I'm not saying this because I read it in the media, I affirm this from experience in the semiconductor industry.
Analogy: if you build one thing out of steel and one thing out of aluminum, you can get the same weight or the same strength, but not both.