Apple’s marketing materials mistakenly state M2 iPad Air has 10 GPU cores
The M2 chip in the iPad Air is equipped with nine GPU cores instead of ten, as Apple’s website and marketing materials originally stated.
Apple has updated the M2 iPad Air Tech Specs page on its US website to reflect this change. It now lists the tablet as having nine graphics cores. Before the change, Apple said the M2 iPad Air used an M2 chip with ten GPU cores.
It may take some time before Apple updates its localized websites in other countries with the change. Only the US website was refreshed at post time, but the original press release and technical documentation still show the old information.
The M2 iPad Air has 9 GPU cores, not 10
9to5Mac first spotted that Apple quietly downgraded the M2 iPad Air’s GPU specification to reflect the missing GPU core. “Based on archive data, the change appears to have been made within the last 10 days,” author Chance Miller writes.
Apple hasn’t commented on what happened, but this is almost certainly a typical case of miscommunication within the company. Apple hasn’t refreshed the M4 iPad Pro’s Tech Specs page, which continues to list a 10-core GPU in the Chip section.
TSMC’s yields (the opposite of the defective rate) for 10-core chips probably aren’t where they’re projected to be, so Apple is forced to use binned parts instead.
Blame it on chip binning
There’s some chip binning going on with the latest Air and Pro. Chip binning refers to a separation of fabricated units during the manufacture which don’t quite behave or perform precisely as they should. Instead of throwing them away, such chips have bad cores disabled so they can be sold as lower-performing processors.
Salvaging weaker chips by disabling some core improves yields and lowers manufacturing costs by increasing the usable die per wafer that can be sold.
We already talked about the iPad Air’s chip-binned GPU, but there’s some chip-binning going on with the M4 iPad Pro’s CPU, too. Notice that if you buy a 256GB or 512GB model, you’ll get a 9-core CPU with 3 performance and 6 efficiency cores.
But opt for a more expensive 1TB or 2TB model and you’ll get a 10-core CPU comprising 4 performance and 6 efficiency cores. Feel free to hop over to the Compare iPad page to check this for yourself.
Apple binned chips before
Some people blame Apple for using chip core count to upsell shoppers to pricier models, but that doesn’t seem to be happening here. What’s happening is that Apple is only putting ten core chips inside these pricier configurations that don’t sell in large quantities because yields for ten core chips are poor.
In 2020, the base M1 MacBook Air shipped with seven graphics cores instead of eight. Another good example is the third-generation Apple TV’s A5 chip, which utilizes only one core. The A5 is normally a dual-core chip but instead of throwing away all units with a bad core, the company used them to power the Apple TV 3.
Chip-binning isn’t Apple’s specialty. All chip makers, including Intel, AMD, Nvidia, and others, use this process to optimize manufacturing costs.
Source link: https://www.idownloadblog.com/2024/06/03/apple-updates-m2-ipad-air-gpu-core-count-chip-binning/
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