Apple downgrades new M2 iPad Air, 9-core GPU instead of 10-core

https://9to5mac.com/2024/06/01/m2-ipad-air-gpu-core-count/

by janandonly • 2 years ago

52 54 2 years ago

thimabi2• 2 years ago

It should be interesting to see if they actually sold iPads with less GPU cores than the specs say, or if the downgrade is just for a new SKU.

upon_drumhead3• 2 years ago

It seems pretty clear that it was a mistake and that all of them sold in the last three weeks were 9 core variants.

O5vYtytb• 2 years ago

That's a rather large mistake for a multi trillion dollar company with a very small selection of products. Wtf?

thimabi2• 2 years ago

I am not so sure of that. Apple does seem like the kind of company that would create an entirely new SKU just for improving margins in a certain product. It all helps differentiating the iPad models.

plorkyeran• 2 years ago

I don't think that's clear at all. My immediate assumption was that the 10-core yields were lower than expected and they have a glut of 9-core chips.

Rinzler892• 2 years ago

I wonder if you can unlock that missing core with the pencil trick[1].

[1] https://computer-communication.blogspot.com/2007/06/unlockin...

hi-v-rocknroll2• 2 years ago

Doubtful because it's Apple, possibly configured by laser or wire jumpers just prior to package encapsulation.

Older GeForces were hackable similarly, but then Nvidia shifted to specific resistance values: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5398555

Rinzler892• 2 years ago

I forgot the /s.

adamsiem2• 2 years ago

I was looking at my paperweight at the office on Friday, an Athlon Socket A CPU, staring at the tape and graphite, thinking about how and why I dragged the lead to do some magic. Thanks for the reminder.

adamsiem2• 2 years ago

Contemporary Example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40533761

ajross• 2 years ago

Apple consumers have been insulated from the semiconductor industry practice of binning for years by high margins and insane growth. Basically Apple could afford to throw out the "only 9 cores work" chips (or whatever) instead of selling them as separate products or performance tiers (or whatever). But now the unit growth is levelling off, so they need to squeeze for "growth" by expanding profits instead.

And one way you do that is by selling the extra chips you'd previously been flagging as yield failures.

dividedbyzero• 2 years ago

When I got my M2 Macbook Air in 2022 I had a choice between 8 and 10 GPU cores. I always assumed the 8 core ones were binned 10-core units, too.

wtallis3• 2 years ago

The MacBook Air with M2 is already sold with either 8 or 10 GPU cores. Having an iPad Air with M2 use 9 GPU cores is completely unsurprising and unremarkable. The only thing noteworthy here is the mistakes in the spec sheet and press release.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_M1#Variants

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_M2#Variants

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_M3#Variants

All of the M-series processors so far have been sold in at least two bins.

cqqxo4zV46cp3• 2 years ago

Just living with that sort of waste is not very Cookian. I am surprised that it took this long.

user90131313• 2 years ago

with this downgrade is it still be able to run the ipad calculator app? Does anyone know? Because in software side of Ipad IOS, that is the biggest innovation in years.

behnamoh3• 2 years ago

the new calculator app is only available on the M4 version because of hardware limits. /s

kstrauser3• 2 years ago

A couple years ago Apple added the concept of swap to the new iPad Pro version of the day. M1 finally had the power to support it.

I must’ve hallucinated running swap on my Amiga way back when.

walterbell2• 2 years ago

in software side of Ipad IOS, that is the biggest innovation in years

That would be iSH, slow but functional Alpine Linux emulation for iOS.

https://ish.app

emptiestplace• 2 years ago

I use it all the time, it's great - I just wish ssh-agent worked on it.

m4633• 2 years ago

with the export restrictions, only the abacus app will work in global markets.

tintedfireglass• 2 years ago

I think the regular calculator would work fine. Not sure about the scientific calculations tho.... Should work properly I guess?

behnamoh3• 2 years ago

Who buys iPads anyway? I have two and I regret it. Totally useless iPadOS, built entirely around Apple's ecosystem (Magic Mouse and Keeb), so much compute power restricted by a greedy company that is worried about their MacBook sales in case iPad becomes a real computing device.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNv2EOc6ma0

acchow• 2 years ago

There are more than half a billion iPads out there.

cqqxo4zV46cp3• 2 years ago

I’d never in a billion years trust anyone with this lack of awareness of the niche nature of their own priorities and desires to build software.

The iPod is wildly popular. Not everyone has the same philosophical bent as you.

behnamoh3• 2 years ago

Good thing you're not in charge of designing Apple products.

gumby• 2 years ago

Ipads are widely considered by analysts and the tech press to be, well not a failure exactly, but a marginal product that has yet to find its niche.

This is despite the fact that they solidly outsell macs. And if they were not from Apple but were a private company they’d be considered one of the few remarkably enormous hits in the tech industry. But Apple is so big it (supposedly) doesn’t matter.

I use an air for taking notes, because handwritten notes are all searchable, and some document annotation. That makes it worth it for me though my mac is my main drive.

SkyPuncher• 2 years ago

iPad is amazing for reading and casual content.

In particular, I like annotating content in books.

n9• 2 years ago

I have been using an iPad Pro as my primary computing device for more than a year now. It works pretty wonderfully for my use case. I just finished writing my dissertation on it last week, actually. I have an old MacBook that I use for specific tasks once or twice a week, but otherwise my iPad, pencil, and keyboard/mouse/5k monitor on my desk works really, really well — better than a laptop by far for my workflow: Zotero/Markdown/MSWord/Logseq/Obsidian.

I’m very happy to not use a general purpose computer anymore, to be honest.

goosedragons• 2 years ago

I think the fact that you have to use a MacBook once or twice a week for specific tasks says everything.

The iPad Pro has been literally as fast as a MBA and supported KB/M input alongside touch and pen for years but you still run into weird edge cases where it's either too janky and time consuming to do on the iPad (e.g. file management) or some really basic app is just missing.

moosedev• 2 years ago

Who buys iPads anyway?

I do.

I have two and I regret it.

Apparently, so do you.

thebruce87m• 2 years ago

Reminds me of my favourite Bushism:

"There's an old saying in Tennessee—I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee—that says, 'Fool me once, shame on...shame on you. Fool me—you can't get fooled again.'"

dlevine• 2 years ago

The variant with the 8-core GPU is most likely also a binned version of the 10-core GPU variant. It's a lot easier to enable/disable cores than to produce different silicon for minor spec differences.

It may be that Apple's yield of 10-core GPUs is lower than expected, but those GPUs validate just fine with 9 cores enabled. Or maybe Apple had another marketing reason, such as further differentiating the iPad Pro.

m4633• 2 years ago

I'll bet it's a yield + dont-want-a-lawsuit combo

KerrAvon2• 2 years ago

why lawsuit?

bastard_op• 2 years ago

They probably found that the 10th one was systemically defective, and is just disabling it now vs a crap shoot which shipped products will crash or not when using theirs. Much like what they'd do with the batteries when they'd go wonky.

Or it's simply that much cheaper to yield a 9 core than a 10 from their production. Gotta stretch that profit margin even more, they don't make enough of apple users already.

librasteve• 2 years ago

theoretically, a single defect will impact overall device yield by

  fraction of area for GPU / total device area * defect density

so, if all the GPUS are 30% of the device area, with a 5% defect density, binning from 10 to 9 is going to increase total yield by 1.6%

square that for binning from 10 to 8 so 3% yield improvement there (so ~4.6% total)

if the TMSC 3nm process is up at 10-20% then this starts to get material

LaSombra• 2 years ago

Will anyone notice a difference?

Apple downgrades new M2 iPad Air, 9-core GPU instead of 10-core

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