Apple is packing a rising variety of self-built customized chips into its devices

The smooth industrial design of Apple’s iPhones and watches was the apparent the star of final week’s product launch occasion. But beneath the ceramic shields, proprietary alloys, and aluminum unibodies, you’ll discover increasingly more chips which are customized by Apple.

For 15 years, the corporate has been steadily transferring away from third-party chips in favor of designing its personal. Apple has repeatedly proven some great benefits of proudly owning all the “tech stack” — if you construct the software program and the {hardware}, you possibly can optimize energy consumption and allow customized options that your rivals can’t.

Apple designs its personal chips, however most of them have been manufactured by TSMC in a detailed partnership that has made Apple one of many chip big’s largest prospects.

During final week’s Apple occasion — which launched the brand new iPhone Air, iPhone 17 lineup, and refreshed Apple Watches — the corporate spotlighted two new customized Apple silicon chips. It confirmed off the N1, “a new Apple-designed wireless networking chip that enables Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6, and Thread,” and the C1X, a second-generation mobile modem chip, which each debut within the new ultrathin iPhone Air.

A 15-year journey

After some collaborations with Samsung for its early iPhone chips, Apple’s A4 chip was the primary one which the corporate touted as an Apple customized chip, which Steve Jobs debuted when he introduced the unique iPad in 2010. 

A decade later, in 2020, Apple moved away from Intel processors for its Mac computer systems. The M1 processor was a system on a chip (SoC), which packed a CPU, GPU, safety, and I/O management all onto one chip. Designing a customized chip for the Mac allowed Apple to spice up energy and effectivity, because it managed each the software program and {hardware}. Apple said that the M1 resulted in twice the efficiency of an Intel-powered PC for one-quarter of the facility.

The firm has additionally pushed into mobile connectivity. While the iPhone 16 nonetheless used a mobile modem from Qualcomm, it launched the primary Apple-designed C1 mobile modem chip within the low-cost iPhone 16e. 

Over the years, Apple has expanded its customized silicon to assist increasingly more of the capabilities of its merchandise.

Developing its personal C sequence mobile modem chip was a serious achievement, because it sits at coronary heart of the iPhone’s core goal: connecting to mobile networks for voice and knowledge. On its first-quarter 2025 earnings name, when requested concerning the first-generation C1 chip, Apple CEO Tim Cook framed the trouble as the start of a long-term technique: 

“We’re super excited to ship the first one and get it out there, and it’s gone well. We love that we can produce better products from a point of view of really focusing on battery life and other things that customers want, and so we have started on a journey, is the way I would put it.”

The subsequent frontier

With so most of the present options already converted to Apple silicon, the corporate is now wanting towards an space the place it badly must catch up: AI.

The Wall Street Journal reported final 12 months that Apple has been collaborating with TSMC on making its personal AI chips for its knowledge facilities that may energy options for Apple companies, a transfer out of step with the remainder of the business, which has favored GPUs made by Nvidia.

Apple’s years of expertise constructing customized chips offers it an edge over different tech firms like OpenAI, Amazon, and Google, which have lately began doing the identical.