Teardown confirms Intel modem presence in iPhone 7

By admin On Sep 19, 2016

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Part of the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus line is equipped with an Intel modem, according to a teardown of the device. The iPhone 7 uses the XMM736 modem platform. Apple also uses Qualcomm X12 modems.

The iPhone 7 that ChipWorks has dissected contains a PMB9943 baseband modem with a die area of 66.4mm2. In addition, there are two Smarti 5 RF transceivers and an X-PMU 736 chip for the power management of the modem. All chips are part of Intel’s XMM7360 modem platform. It is the first time that Intel hardware is present in an iPhone. Rumors that the Intel modem would make its appearance in the iPhone have been around for some time.

In the past, Intel is said to have negotiated with Apple about the use of the Intel Atom soc in the iPhone. However, Intel failed to gain a foothold in the mobile market and compete with the energy-efficient ARM chips with its x86 chips. The chip giant has put its plans for smartphone chips on hold and is now focusing, among other things, on modem chips.

“We looked at what we were spending our R&D on,” said Venkata Renduchintala, vice president at Intel. “We had some mobile socs that I didn’t think were worth developing.” According to Renduchintala, that does not mean that Intel will no longer produce mobile platforms at all, but whether that also means that Intel is developing socs for smartphones again is not clear.

In addition to Intel modems, Apple also ships versions of the iPhone 7 with a Qualcomm modem, the X12 MDM9645M LTE Cat. 12. This is evident from the teardown of iFixit. This modem supports the cdma network used in the US, unlike the Intel modem. This means that the Intel versions of the iPhone 7 will not function on the Verizon and Sprint network. With previous iPhones, all variants could be used on cdma networks. Apple has put a list online to make it clear to consumers which of the iPhone 7 variants do and do not support cdma. The reason that Apple purchases modems from both Qualcomm and Intel is probably that the manufacturer does not want to be dependent on a single supplier.

ChipWorks has also taken a closer look at Apple’s A10 Fusion soc. The processor is produced on TSMC’s 16nm finfet process, has a surface area of 125mm2 and consists of 3.3 billion transistors. The die image shows the two powerful cores, the SDRAM and the GPU, but the two economical computing cores of the A10 prove more difficult to locate. In addition to the A10, the iPhone 7 contains lpddr4 RAM from Samsung, of the same type as Apple used with the iPhone 6s.