| ▲ | Apple A19 SoC die shot(chipwise.tech) |
| 99 points by giuliomagnifico 11 hours ago | 50 comments |
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| ▲ | wicktron 9 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| Missing Anandtech.com right about now |
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| ▲ | fooker 20 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | Just in case you didn’t know, dude works at Apple now! (For about ten years now..) | | | |
| ▲ | sonofhans 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | /me pours one out | | |
| ▲ | alberth 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | Chips & Cheese is a good current alternative. https://chipsandcheese.com/ | | |
| ▲ | _rs 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | Quite unfortunate to see they're hosted on Substack | | |
| ▲ | watusername 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | What’s wrong with Substack? | | |
| ▲ | petralithic 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | They might be referring to Substack having a very open policy of having writers of any political (and other) affiliation on the platform, but I don't necessarily see it as a drawback to be so neutral. | | |
| ▲ | danpalmer 6 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | Unfortunately there's no such thing as neutrality when it comes to intolerance, because intolerance is viral. I understand the desire to have neutral infrastructure or reporting agencies, but it's more complicated than that. | |
| ▲ | brendoelfrendo 19 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | Nazis. They allow Nazis on the platform. Platforming Nazis is not neutrality. |
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| ▲ | pryce an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | Might be the allegations such as those made by David Farrier this August[1] > Then, last month, Substack sent out a push notification to some users of the Substack app encouraging them to subscribe to a Nazi newsletter. Like, full-Nazi stuff. Not subtle: followed by a screenshot of a Substack profile full of swastikas describing itself as news for the "National Socialist and White Nationalist Community" [1] https://www.webworm.co/webwormisleavingsubstack/ |
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| ▲ | Zee2 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| It’s still my strongly held belief that things like this are one of humanity’s grandest achievements. |
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| ▲ | temp0826 9 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | It's definitely an "on the shoulders of giants standing on the shoulders of giants" thing. Insane breakthrough technologies on top of other insane breakthroughs. Firing lasers at microscopic molten drops of metal in a controlled enough manner to get massively consistent results like what?? | | |
| ▲ | itopaloglu83 9 hours ago | parent [-] | | It’s a mind blowing achievement, nothing below sorcery if you think about it. ASML machines are hitting tin droplets with 25kW laser 50,000 times a second to turn them into plasma to create the necessary extreme ultraviolet light, and despite generating 500W of EUV, only a small fraction can reach the wafer, due to loses along the way. I believe it was like 10%. Here’s an incredible, very detailed video about it: https://youtu.be/B2482h_TNwg | | |
| ▲ | martinpw 6 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | That is a very high quality video. One thing I am curious about - how many generations of process shrink is one of these machines good for? They talk about regular EUV and then High-NA EUV for finer processes, but presumably each machine works for multiple generations of process shrink? If so, what needs to be adjusted to move to a finer generation of lithography and how is it done? Does ASML come in and upgrade the machine for the next process generation, or does it come out of the box already able to deliver to a resolution a few steps beyond the current state of the art? | | | |
| ▲ | bigwheels 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | That is a really cool video, thank you! Maybe the high water usage is at some other stage? Or intermediate preceding stages? I'd love to understand more end-to-end, as surely it isn't as easy as popping a wafer in a semi-truck trailer sized lithography machine. | |
| ▲ | jjmarr 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | I've been trying to find that video!! Our professor showed it in class but I was half-asleep and I wanted to rewatch it so badly. |
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| ▲ | brcmthrowaway 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Nah, NVIDIA GPU has way more raw computational power & smarts. | | |
| ▲ | userbinator an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | GPUs are far more regular in structure, lots of "copy-pasted" blocks, because they are a collection of many relatively simple processors. | |
| ▲ | NetMageSCW 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | See how fast it is running on 8 watts. |
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| ▲ | elcritch an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Fascinating, what surprises me is that it looks more "fractal" like than other chip dies I've looked at. Perhaps all the newest ones do, however it makes me wonder if part of Apples secret sauce is more sophisticated design tooling. |
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| ▲ | onjectic an hour ago | parent [-] | | Very organic looking, like they passed it through an optimization algorithm. | | |
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| ▲ | nomel 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Is there a link to a version that isn't almost entirely compression artifacts? This definitely isn't the original, since the blue text at the bottom right isn't even legible. |
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| ▲ | daemonologist 9 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Seems like the full resolution images are for sale ("contact us"). | |
| ▲ | bigwheels 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | +1, it's pretty fuzzy. Maybe chipsandcheese or hotchips will do an independent imaging? The A19 appears to be remarkably intricate chip. | |
| ▲ | Neywiny 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Yeah if you scroll down they tell you how | | |
| ▲ | system2 9 hours ago | parent [-] | | I scrolled down, and there is only 1 paragraph of text and two blurry images. What did you scroll down to? | | |
| ▲ | paulsen 9 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Next to the paragraph of text is this: "High Resolution Floorplan images available here" With some contact info below that It is moved to the end of the page on mobile it seems | |
| ▲ | cAtte_ 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | > High Resolution Floorplan images available here > Call Us > Write to us |
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| ▲ | hmottestad 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Anyone interested in more info and detailed videos should check out Geekerwan: https://youtu.be/Y9SwluJ9qPI English subtitles are recommended, unless you are better at Chinese than I am. |
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| ▲ | ksec 7 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | The interesting part is the E-Core on A19 Pro are nearly as good as the previous ARM Big Core while only using half the power. I would love to know the die size of the cache and E-Core. ARM were catching up to Apple in terms of big core, now Apple has leapfrogged in E-Core again. But competition is good. ARM should have some announcement coming in next few months. | |
| ▲ | miotintherain 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Is there some magic with AI that lets you watch those videos dubbed in English? |
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| ▲ | brailsafe 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Didn't think I'd be confronted with a covert Factorio map today. I just deleted the damn game to try and regain control over my life! |
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| ▲ | alberth 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Do TSMC current node sizes allow for Backside Power Delivery (BPD)? As someone who knows nothing about PCB, from those images it appears that double side printing of some sort is happening. Please correct me if I'm wrong. |
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| ▲ | monocasa 8 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | No backside power delivery on TSMC yet, even at 2nm. It's supposed to come on TSMC's A16 node. I think what you're seeing is the silicon layers visible from the back through the bulk substrate, and the metal layers on the front. | |
| ▲ | wmf 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | There is no backside anything here. This may be a photo of a thinned die; silicon is somewhat transparent so you can often see the die structures better from the back because it isn't blocked by the metal stack. | | |
| ▲ | adgjlsfhk1 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | It will be a shame when backside power delivery makes that not work as well. |
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| ▲ | muricula 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Does anyone know what the block dot at 12 o'clock on the image is?
https://chipwise.tech/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/A19_SoC_die... |
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| ▲ | dishsoap 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Well I see the 'die shot,' but not the 'analysis' |
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| ▲ | top_sigrid 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Are there also already analyses of these die shots, explaining what be concluded from them? |
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| ▲ | flykespice 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Ken Shirriff it's your time |
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| ▲ | kens 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | I'm afraid that chip is too complicated for me. I'm still trying to figure out the 386 :-) But I did colorize the A19 die photo with Apple's M1 rainbow gradient, just for fun: https://oldbytes.space/@kenshirriff/115256179526128051 | | |
| ▲ | userbinator an hour ago | parent [-] | | If the Apple A19 could be made in the 386's process (1000-1500nm), it would be about 300-500x bigger than its current size in each dimension. "too complicated", what an understatement! Even the 386 wasn't exactly simple. The complexity of these modern chips is mind-bendingly immense. |
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| ▲ | drob518 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I think I see a bug. |
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| ▲ | hirvi74 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| The only thing more impressive than this technology to me is possibly the machines that manufacture these chips. |
