Apple plans to use their own processors Apple Silicon in its own artificial intelligence servers. The company asks Foxconn and Lenovo to assemble them in Taiwan.
The servers will be used, among other things, to power the Apple Intelligence service. The company turned to Foxconn and Lenovo to build the machines and specifically asked them to manufacture the servers in Taiwan. One of the reasons may be distancing from ChinaThe second was the involvement of Foxconn engineering resources, which created AI servers on the NVIDIA platform.
Foxconn, Apple’s main manufacturing partner, is also the world’s largest manufacturer of AI servers, mainly based on NVIDIA H100 and H200. However, Foxconn’s capacity in Taiwan is rather limited as the company is preparing to start mass production of GB200-based machines with Blackwell architecture.
«One of the reasons Apple wants Foxconn to produce servers in Taiwan is that it hopes to attract engineering talent and R&D resources that work on NVIDIA projects,» an insider tells Nikkei.
Apple’s approach to artificial intelligence is different from that of cloud service providers such as Microsoft and Amazon. It focuses more on artificial intelligence inference rather than training large-scale language models. Therefore, Apple will not need servers with complex technologies such as liquid cooling.
Since Apple’s AI servers are intended for internal use, the production scale will be relatively small compared to NVIDIA GB200. This also poses a problem, as companies like Foxconn and Lenovo favor customers with large orders. However, the rollout of Apple Intelligence to more users raises hopes for larger orders.
Apple is lagging behind NVIDIA in designing data center servers, so it is looking for support from suppliers for engineering and design services. On the other hand, Apple’s servers are not as complex, so the development and validation process should be faster.
Due to Foxconn’s limited capacity in Taiwan, Apple is also in talks with Lenovo and its subsidiary LCFC for development assistance. To diversify and reduce dependence on Chinese suppliers, Apple and Lenovo are discussing additional manufacturing capacity outside of China. Smaller suppliers, such as Universal Scientific Industrial, are also being considered to support production.
Sources: Nikkei, Tom’s Hardware