Analyst Ming-Chi Kuo has repeated other reports that Apple is expected to use a new chip packaging technology in the A20 chip, which is debuting in iPhone 18 next year. His report focuses on suppliers for chip packaging materials rather than the benefits of the new process. We heard the same from analyst Jeff Pu a few months ago.
When you buy an iPhone 16 today, the A19 chip inside is a rather large and complex monolithic “system on a chip.” It has CPU, GPU, Neural Motor, Video and Sound Coders and Decoders and a lot of other little things on a large complex piece of silicon with about 30 billion transistors. Many chips are made on a large silicon disk (called a slice) and then wrapped up and cut into individual A19 chips, called “Dies.”
But the frame is not on the same piece of silicon. RAM is typically made using different silicon processes, on various large slices, cut in their own dies. Then the frame is combined with the great soc by connecting the two together using another piece of silicon, called an interposer.
This is done because the manufacturing processes that produce SRAM effectively are different from what produces logic effectively. But with a new TSMC technology called “WAFER-Level Multi-Chip Module (WMCM) packaging”, that may change.
This process will enable Apple to build a large monolithic chip that Includes The frame on the same door as CPU, GPU, Neural engine, media codes and so on. If the current rumors are correct, this would be 12 GB of RAM, but the process does not require any specific amount. Rumors point to the iPhone 18 as the first device to use the new chip, and the iPhone fold can also be a candidate.
On-Die RAM can simplify the manufacturing process, requiring fewer steps than the current RAM-ON-INTERSPOSER SETTER. But the advantage of users is the potential to have very wide and fast RAM interfaces, making access to RAM almost as fast as an SRAM cache at a high level. This can drastically improve performance in situations limited by memory bandwidth, such as high prestans 3D graphics or certain AI applications.
It can also allow for better power control, so SOC with integrated RAM can use less power than the current setup with RAM associated with an interposer. This can improve the life of the battery, but the life of the battery is a factor with many different components such as display, wireless radios, storage and more.