Apple investment chip will cost 7 billion US dollars

Last week, SemiAuccurate reported that Apple may invest in its own processor production plant. Today, Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Musnter predicts that if Apple builds its own chip facility and develops a 10-nanometer process, it will cost $2 billion. If Apple chooses to build a full-function factory for R&D and production, it will cost between US$5 billion and US$7 billion.

So, Munster thinks that Apple is more interested in developing technology than buying a factory. He believes that Apple may license or sell its own R & D processor, which will enable Apple to further reduce the cost of chip production. After developing its own processor, Apple can further improve the performance of the A series of processors. In last week’s report, rumors claimed that Apple had to invest in UMC, but Munster thought that UMC was not suitable for Apple because UMC's process technology lags far behind Intel, Samsung, IBM, and Global Foundries.

In fact, for Apple, the best three chip foundries are Samsung, TSMC TSMC and Intel. Only these three companies seem to be unable to cooperate with Apple for various reasons. Samsung is Apple's main competitor. The problems faced by TSMC's 20-nm process have not been solved, and Intel does not have an ARM processor-based infrastructure. Another option for Apple is IBM. Apple may choose to acquire IBM's chip manufacturing division.