Apple ramps SoIC for Balta ASIC
Morgan Stanley notes Apple is expanding System on Integrated Chip (SoIC) capacity at TSMC to make its Balta ASICs for AI servers, with wafer orders reportedly around 36K in 2026 and rising to 60K in 2027. Those numbers indicate Apple is scaling custom ASIC production aggressively for server workloads rather than staying consumer‑only (Apple Balta SoIC ramp note).
Think of System on Integrated Chips as chip stacking: instead of putting every function on one flat slab of silicon, manufacturers bond smaller chips together to cut power loss and raise bandwidth. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company says its SoIC process is built for high-performance, low-power designs with ultra-dense vertical stacking. (tsmc.com) Apple is now reserving much more of that packaging capacity at Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company for a server chip project called Baltra, according to a Morgan Stanley note circulated this week. The note says Apple’s SoIC orders are running at the equivalent of 36,000 wafers in calendar 2026 and 60,000 wafers in calendar 2027. (wccftech.com) Baltra has been reported before as Apple’s in-house artificial intelligence server chip, built with Broadcom on networking technology and aimed at mass production in 2026. Reuters, citing The Information in December 2024, reported that Apple planned to use Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company’s 3-nanometer process for the chip. (finance.yahoo.com) Apple already runs cloud artificial intelligence jobs on its own servers through Private Cloud Compute, the system it introduced with Apple Intelligence in June 2024. Apple said those requests use larger server-based models on Apple silicon servers when a task is too large to run on an iPhone, iPad, or Mac. (apple.com) Apple’s security documentation says Private Cloud Compute sends only the data needed for a request, does not store that data, and is designed so even Apple cannot access it in plain form. Apple also said the servers use Secure Enclave and Secure Boot, the same security building blocks it uses in consumer devices. (security.apple.com) That makes the SoIC ramp look less like a Mac packaging story and more like data-center buildout. Morgan Stanley’s numbers are far above what Apple would need for a narrow slice of high-end personal computers, and other reports tied the capacity directly to Baltra and Private Cloud Compute. (edgen.tech) Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company pitches SoIC as a way to reconnect chiplets — small functional blocks split from a larger design — so the combined package can outperform a conventional single chip and add more functions. That is the kind of design tradeoff cloud operators make when they want more compute in the same power and space envelope. (tsmc.com) Apple has not publicly confirmed Baltra, its production schedule, or the Morgan Stanley wafer figures. But the company has been steadily making its server effort more visible: in October 2025, Apple said advanced servers built in Houston were already shipping to its data centers to help power Private Cloud Compute and Apple Intelligence. (apple.com) If those wafer reservations hold, Apple will enter 2027 with a much larger footprint in the part of the chip industry built for cloud inference, not just phones and laptops. The next proof point is whether Baltra shows up in the infrastructure behind future Apple Intelligence features, rather than only in analyst notes and supply-chain leaks. (wccftech.com)
