Apple's A10 processor part model is APL1W24339S00255 (A9 is APL1022339S00129). We are not sure what the "W" in A10 model means. Our A10 processor of iPhone 7 comes from TSMC. Remember the iPhone 6s? Its A9 processor is provided by Samsung and TSMC at the same time. We are not sure whether the A10 processor is provided by Samsung this time.

From the photos, we can see that A10's mold part model is TMGK98, and A9's is TMGK96. The A10 processor has an area of about 125 square millimeters and is officially said to have 3.3 billion crystal tubes.

(It can be seen that its model is TMGK98)

It can be confirmed that it was manufactured by TSMC's 16nm FinFET process, which is also Apple's use of this technology for three consecutive times. The FinFET process has undergone two iterative upgrades, so that Apple can optimize A10 and become the same integration density as A8. The 9-Track and 7.5-Track units of the 16FFC process bring more transistors, but do not make the area of the chip larger. It was thought that it would reach 150 square millimeters. From 20nm to 16nm, the performance improvement and power consumption reduction brought by the process are quite obvious.

(Component area distribution diagram)

Now we can see the picture of the crystal tube body. Through the picture, we can see the position of the GPU and SDRAM. But we have a question: where are the two low-power cores mentioned in the press conference?

Usually, two groups of (high-frequency+low-frequency) cores are symmetrically placed on the top. Obviously, the two high-frequency cores can be seen on the right side of the mold, and their area is about 16 square millimeters. Compared with the processor core of A9, which is 13 square millimeters, will the two low-power cores be embedded in the two high-frequency cores? In the picture, we have marked an area that may also be the location of the CPU, but it is not known for the time being, so it needs further investigation.

Another factor to improve performance is packaging technology, A10 The processor is super thin and adopts TSMC's InFO packaging technology. Below the A10 processor is Samsung K3RG1G10CM 2GB LPDDR4 memory, which is very similar to that on the iPhone 6s. It can be seen from the X-ray that the four chips are not stacked together, but laid flat. This arrangement also greatly reduces the height of the packaging. The memory uses the packaging stack technology, With A10 InFO packaging technology, the overall height is greatly reduced.

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