My understanding, and I’m a layman, is it basically requires making new masks. And that’s not trivial.
I guess you’d be doing that anyway with a brand new chip. But still probably easier to work with the tools/fab you know well.
I suppose you’d have to do it just switching nodes at TSMC. Which is why the A13 (or whatever) probably never moves to smaller nodes.
Sometimes Apple updates the chip in a product that doesn’t seem to need it, like the AppleTV. I wonder if it’s because the old node is going away and it’s easier to just use a newer chip that was designed for the newer node.
I guess you’d be doing that anyway with a brand new chip. But still probably easier to work with the tools/fab you know well.
I suppose you’d have to do it just switching nodes at TSMC. Which is why the A13 (or whatever) probably never moves to smaller nodes.
Sometimes Apple updates the chip in a product that doesn’t seem to need it, like the AppleTV. I wonder if it’s because the old node is going away and it’s easier to just use a newer chip that was designed for the newer node.