Almost four months away from the announcement of Apple Inc.’s next range of iPhones, the news cycle has already begun with a report that Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. has started production on the chips that will be used in the new phones.

The A12 chip, presuming Apple keeps its naming pattern, will use “a 7-nanometer design that can be smaller, faster and more efficient than the 10-nanometer chips in current Apple devices like the iPhone 8 and iPhone X,” according to sources quoted by Bloomberg.

The report fits nicely with an announcement from TSMC May 3 that its 7-nanometer FinFET process node has entered into high-volume manufacturing without specifically mentioning that it was making Apple A12 chips. TMSC has been making Apple chips starting from the A8 alongside Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. before becoming the sole manufacturer of Apple chips starting from the A10.

Not only is a 7-nm design the natural progression from the 10 nm design of the A11, Samsung announced Tuesday that it would start manufacturing 7-nm chips in the second half of the year.

Whether the implementation of the 7-nm design will be similar between Samsung and Apple is not clear. Samsung is describing its technology as 7-nm Low Power Plus (7LPP) and the first semiconductor process technology to use an extreme ultraviolet lithography solution.

Other reports about the next range of iPhones remain all over the place, including speculation as to what the phones will be called. MacRumors suggested that Apple is working on a second-generation 5.8-inch OLED iPhone that’s a successor to the iPhone X, a larger 6.5-inch OLED iPhone that can be thought of as an “iPhone X Plus,” and a lower-cost 6.1-inch LCD iPhone.

Photo: yanki01/Flickr