If you’re still banking on Apple releasing the iPad 3 this October, this might disappoint you: there’s just no chance that an A6 SoC will be ready this year. In fact, if there’s going to be a quad-core chip at the heart of the iPad 3 at all, we might be looking at an iPhone 5 sized delay between tablet generations by the time the next iPad comes around.

According to the Taiwan Economic News, the A6 CPU just won’t be ready until the second quarter of 2012 at the earliest.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co, or TSMC, is the company allegedly behind the A6, but the latest report suggests that trial production is only now getting underway.

The A6 will reportedly boast TSMC’s new 28-nanometer process, along with 3D stacking technologies that will vastly improve performance in the iPad 3 without significantly increasing power draw.

This 3D stacking technology is theoretically enough to allow Apple to make an ARM processor powerful enough to put into the MacBook Air… something Apple is doubtlessly aware of as they threaten Intel to lower power consumption in mobile x86 processors or lose Apple’s business.

Right now, the rumor that Apple will bring out an iPad 3 or iPad 2 HD in October isn’t looking particularly rosy. The A6 CPU isn’t ready and neither is a Retina Display. Without either of those components ready for mass production, there doesn’t seem to be any compelling reason for Apple to hurry up the time frame for the third-generation of their tablet.

[via GigaOM]