Just cracked open an iPhone 17 Pro, and guess what? It’s packed with chips from over 15 different companies!
This teardown image is seriously impressive—I must have looked at it a dozen times.
Inside the iPhone 17 Pro, there are three main boards: the processor board, memory board, and RF board. Each of these boards is cluttered with chips from various companies.
Let’s count them: TSMC, Samsung, Qualcomm, Broadcom, Texas Instruments, NXP, Cirrus Logic, STMicroelectronics, Bosch, Skyworks, Qorvo, Analog Devices, Kioxia, USI... more than 15 in total.
Apple designs the A19 Pro chip and some power management chips, but the rest? It all relies on others.
Qualcomm provides the 5G modem and RF transceiver. Broadcom handles the Wi-Fi and wireless charging controllers. Samsung supplies the 12GB LPDDR5X memory, while Kioxia takes care of the 256GB flash storage. Cirrus Logic handles the audio codecs, and Bosch is responsible for the accelerometer and gyroscope.
In simple terms, Apple is the chief designer, but there are dozens of builders behind the scenes.
Here’s a detail many might not know: the image uses three colors to indicate the chip manufacturing processes. Green triangles represent advanced processes requiring ASML's $400 million EUV lithography machine, while blue diamonds indicate mature processes that only need DUV technology.
Guess what? The vast majority of these chips are blue!
Only the A19 Pro chip from TSMC and Qualcomm’s 5G modem use advanced processes. The rest—power management, audio, sensors, and RF front-end—are all made with mature processes.
What does this tell us? The whole world is racing towards 2nm and 3nm technologies, but in a smartphone, only a couple of chips actually need cutting-edge processes. Mature processes are the backbone supporting the entire electronics industry.
Honestly, this image also sheds light on why the impact of chip restrictions is more complex than we might think. If you cut off EUV access, yes, you’re stifling the most advanced chip. But 80% of the chips in a phone can still be made with DUV.
The story behind a smartphone reflects the entire global semiconductor supply chain. No single country can produce an iPhone on its own.
This isn’t just a choice of globalization; it’s dictated by the laws of physics.
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