Just like every other year, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) has announced that their latest and greatest, in this case 7nm+ chips, have entered mass production. While the company hasn’t mentioned the Apple A13 by name, it never does and we can assume the chips referred to are Apple A13 and Huawei Kirin 985.

The real news here is the 7nm+ manufacturing process. While 7nm was already impressive, the + variant uses a new EUV (Extreme Ultraviolet) lithography which allows TSMC to streamline and optimise the manufacturing process even further. We expect 7nm+ to be the dominating standard for smartphone SoCs in 2019.

As the A13 SoC has entered mass production, we expect so have many other iPhone parts. This doesn’t mean much on its own, but the higher the production quantity, the more leaks and especially more accurate leaks surface. What this means to you is that we should soon be able to pinpoint much more precisely what the upcoming iPhone will have, will not have and what it will change.

As a side note, TSMC seems to be continuing business with Huawei after the recent “Huawei Ban” in the US, and while the company is certainly Taiwanese, meaning the ban does not apply to them, they’re using the ARM instruction set, even in Huawei SoCs, which could cause legal trouble down the line, causing a manufacturing shortage for Apple if TSMC has to deal with lawsuits.

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