Apple is Reportedly Facing a 'Massive Dilemma' With the MacBook Neo

[JoeG4]

That is a strategy that Apple and other manufacturers have used for many years. It’s a smart way of dealing with the failure rate of chips on each new fab process generation and lets them use those chips in lower cost devices. It’s good for Apple and good for the customers. And it’s less wasteful than just disposing of the chips that, other than having a disabled GPU or two are perfectly fine. People do seem to love it.

Yep! And sometimes AMD does it in a 'seasonal' sort of manner, like they made the 5800x3d and later the 7800x3d... and those have been offered as 5600X3D, 5700X3D, and I believe 7600X3D which were sold substantially cheaper than the x800 models, but often only offered randomly at certain stores (like microcenter).

But yea everyone does it. Off the top of my head, the nvidia geforce rtx 3090 and 3080 use the same chip but the 3080s were 'binned' and far far cheaper. It was also a time when the 3090s sold so dang well that they barely offered any 3080s for sale lol.

When demand of the 'binned' chip exceeds that of the un-binned chip, sometimes you get factory freaks. Over the years there's been more than one intel i5 that I've heard of that can overclock extremely well, because they had much higher quality chips.

 

[Basic75]

When demand of the 'binned' chip exceeds that of the un-binned chip, sometimes you get factory freaks.

There are no "unbinned" chips in this scenario. Some chips go into the "fully functional" bin, others go into a "something's disabled" bin. AMD is not only doing this "seasonally" with the X3D chips, the "normal" Ryzen lineup has 6-core and 12-core models that only use 6 of the 8 cores per CCD. You're spot on with "everyone does it".

 

[Abazigal]

If I were Apple, I would work with TSMC to work on an M1 SoC built on the N3P 3 nm process specifically for the MacBook Neo. The result is an M1 SoC that will run faster than the original M1 because its power consumption will be much lower.

Which sounds like it would defeat the whole point of using the A18 pro chip in the MacBook Neo - that because it’s effectively free, Apple gets to sell said laptop at a lower price and still make a tidy profit at the end of the day. You lose that edge if you still have to research a brand new processor and dedicate an entire line to manufacturing it.

 

[ChrisA]

Well, now we know why they were able to get the price point so low on these. Here, have a discarded chip in your machine that we paid $0 for. We think you're going to love it!

Companies have been selling "binned" chips for many years. Even in the 1990s, Intel was selling “Pentium" chips with different clock speeds. Do you think they had four production lines? No. They tested and sorted the chips. Some would clock faster, and others slower. They binned them and sold the slower chips at a lower price.


Memory was this way too. If an 8K chip has only 4K, it was sold as a 4K chip.


This idea is at least 40 years old, that I know of. Even vacuum tubes were like that; some worked better and sold for more. So the practice goes back to at least the post-war era in the 1950s.

 

[ChrisA]

It's been done forever. I recall buying a Slot-A 700mhz AMD processor years ago, but when I later pulled off the heatsink, it was a 900mhz chip.

It has been going on for likely thousands of years. Farmers have fruit trees, and some fruit looks better. They sort the harvest into "bins" and then sell the different bins for different prices. The ugly oranges are made into orange juice. Just like the ugly chips are made into Neo books

Their ugly fruit is not "free". Apple spent just as much money to make the defective chip and the perfect chip. Same for the ancient farmers. The ugly fruit was not easier to grow.

 

[ikramerica]

It has been going on for likely thousands of years. Farmers have fruit trees, and some fruit looks better. They sort the harvest into "bins" and then sell the different bins for different prices. The ugly oranges are made into orange juice. Just like the ugly chips are made into Neo books

Their ugly fruit is not "free". Apple spent just as much money to make the defective chip and the perfect chip. Same for the ancient farmers. The ugly fruit was not easier to grow.

In Apple’s case, needing more 5 GPU chips actually means that they increase output of 6 GPU chips, making those less expensive if they can use them.

As for fruit, often the best fruit is binned because it won’t travel to market and keep well, so it’s used right away or frozen. Which is why frozen fruit is usually better for you, too.

 

[Milquetoast]

We did this back in 1976 (yes, a full 50 years ago) with memories. There were very few "half" memories to sell (and they had to be the "correct" half), but speed-binned parts were de rigueur - as the diffusion resistivity differences made some parts faster and more power hungry, while others were slower and less power hungry. They all had to meet the power spec (although one could decide to have different power specs for different speed parts), but some were naturally faster than others. It's basic physics.

 

[y2graham]

This shows again that Apple lost sight of what users want. They should have predicted the demand.
Underlines that they only want to sell their old parts and don’t care about users being price-conscious. On the other hand they over-produce iPhone Air and will do the same with Fold/Ultra and forget about the current economy which leads people to be more concerned about the prices of devices.

I have to completely disagree with your comments. What do you mean buy only want to sell old parts? This is the only product in the Apple line up featuring a chip that has been discontinued. The binned chip would have just been wasted so if anything this is a great move commercially. Also, with all the global issues around memory and chips and Windows 11 being a nightmare, this is the perfect opportunity for Apple to release a new product. Predicting demand is one of the hardest elements of a product launch and by your comment it shows you have no Idea what you're talking about.

 

[Ishimura]

 

[MacCheetah3]

Well, now we know why they were able to get the price point so low on these. Here, have a discarded chip in your machine that we paid $0 for. We think you're going to love it!

On one hand, I'm disappointed they're cramming "faulty" chips into these and selling them for hundreds, [...]

If that rubs you the wrong way, I hope you’re not interested in the RTX Pro 6000, an >$8,000 GPU. It’s technically ‘ ”faulty”,' with Nvidia choosing to accept up to ~2% of defective sub-processors (a.k.a. cores).

NVIDIA RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell Benchmarks & Tear-Down | Thermals, Gaming, LLM, & Acoustic Tests | GamersNexus

GPUs NVIDIA RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell Benchmarks & Tear-Down | Thermals, Gaming, LLM, & Acoustic Tests September 25, 2025 Last Updated: 2025-09-25 We benchmarked the RTX PRO 6000 in gaming scenarios using an AMD Ryzen 9800X3D, experimented with LLM benchmarks, and ran thermal and acoustic tests The...

gamersnexus.net

The GeForce RTX 5090 is "cut down" to less than 90% (i.e., the final product) of the GB202 die. The GeForce RTX 5080 technically requires the full die (i.e., GB203). I say technically because, for those who don’t know/remember, Nvidia did apparently allow some defective units to slip by.

Investigating NVIDIA’s Defective GPUs: RTX 5080 Missing ROPs Benchmarks | GamersNexus

GPUs Investigating NVIDIA’s Defective GPUs: RTX 5080 Missing ROPs Benchmarks March 10, 2025 Last Updated: 2025-03-10 We take a look at an RTX 5080 with missing ROPs and benchmark its performance against a non-defective model The Highlights The RTX 5080 is supposed to have 112 ROPs, but we...

gamersnexus.net

Anyway… As others have pointed out, “binning,” including fully functioning chips with different performance grades/levels, is common.

 

[daabido]

Oh no, Tim might have to lose 1-2% of margin.

He'll make it up on 150% services margins.

 

[PBG4 Dude]

Yes

Wait, so the Neo is just Apple’s leftover crap? Which they hustled poor kids into buying?

Yes. It’s clearly the “I got a rock” of Apple products.

 

[iMac The Knife]

Companies have been selling "binned" chips for many years. Even in the 1990s, Intel was selling “Pentium" chips with different clock speeds. Do you think they had four production lines? No. They tested and sorted the chips. Some would clock faster, and others slower. They binned them and sold the slower chips at a lower price.


Memory was this way too. If an 8K chip has only 4K, it was sold as a 4K chip.


This idea is at least 40 years old, that I know of. Even vacuum tubes were like that; some worked better and sold for more. So the practice goes back to at least the post-war era in the 1950s.

There's a big difference between binning faulty chips/gpu's and binning chips/gpu's with superior performance, the latter of which is what people refer to as 'winning the chip lottery'. I've had top ten Fire Strike & Time Spy runs before, back when I was building gaming rigs, and this was well after the initial benchmarking began for the new hardware at the time. I'm very familiar with winning the chip lottery. Buying a device with a chip that has less cores than it is supposed to is the opposite of this.

 

[Detnator]

There's a big difference between binning faulty chips/gpu's and binning chips/gpu's with superior performance, the latter of which is what people refer to as 'winning the chip lottery'. I've had top ten Fire Strike & Time Spy runs before, back when I was building gaming rigs, and this was well after the initial benchmarking began for the new hardware are the time. I'm very familiar with winning the chip lottery. Buying a device with a chip that has less cores than it is supposed to is the opposite of this.

Sigh…

These chips are not “faulty”. Any understanding of how all this works that considers chips that are “binned” in this way as “faulty”, is a faulty understanding.

The Neo chip is marketed and sold as a chip with 5 fully functioning GPU cores. And that’s exactly what it is. None of the electrons are going anywhere near some sixth less than fully functioning core. Whatever sixth core was there has been completely disconnected and isolated as part of a standard universal process practiced industry-wide. There is nothing faulty about any of the components that make up the chip as advertised.

“Has less cores than it’s supposed to, implies they’re supposed to have six cores, but that’s not the case. All chips are specifically designed to accommodate some of the cores not making it through the manufacturing process perfectly, and that standard industry-wide process that isolates the faulty cores makes the resulting chip not faulty. So whatever comes out the end has exactly the number of cores it’s supposed to have because they’re specifically designed to have any number of cores.

When you buy a MacBook Pro and there are two Max chips available, one with less cores than the other, do you really believe they are specifically pro-actively making the lower core ones separately?

I pull a bunch of six bananas off a tree. Five of them are perfectly good, one of them bad. Do I throw the whole bunch out as bad, or do I remove the bad one and sell the other five as a bunch of FIVE, (for less than I sell each of my other bunches of six each)? No sane rational person is going to say the bunch of five is bad, or has less bananas “than it’s supposed to” under those circumstances.

That’s how ignorant these “faulty” and “less cores than it’s supposed to” arguments are.

 

[iMac The Knife]

Sigh…

These chips are not “faulty”. Any understanding of how all this works that considers chips that are “binned” in this way as “faulty”, is a faulty understanding.

The Neo chip is marketed and sold as a chip with 5 fully functioning GPU cores. And that’s exactly what it is. None of the electrons are going anywhere near some sixth less than fully functioning core. Whatever sixth core was there has been completely disconnected and isolated as part of a standard universal process practiced industry-wide. There is nothing faulty about any of the components that make up the chip as advertised.

“Has less cores than it’s supposed to, implies they’re supposed to have six cores, but that’s not the case. All chips are specifically designed to accommodate some of the cores not making it through the manufacturing process perfectly, and that standard industry-wide process that isolates the faulty cores makes the resulting chip not faulty. So whatever comes out the end has exactly the number of cores it’s supposed to have because they’re specifically designed to have any number of cores.

When you buy a MacBook Pro and there are two Max chips available, one with less cores than the other, do you really believe they are specifically pro-actively making the lower core ones separately?

I pull a bunch of six bananas off a tree. Five of them are perfectly good, one of them bad. Do I throw the whole bunch out as bad, or do I remove the bad one and sell the other five as a bunch of FIVE, (for less than I sell each of my other bunches of six each)? No sane rational person is going to say the bunch of five is bad, or has less bananas “than it’s supposed to” under those circumstances.

That’s how ignorant these “faulty” and “less cores than it’s supposed to” arguments are.

To simplify this, these CPU's were designed to have six working cores. Some ended up only having five working cores, which happens. They do have less cores than they were designed to have, and it's still a gimped chip that was binned for having a faulty core. I've never said these chips were faulty, by the way. So, I don't know what you're sighing about.

 

[Tagbert]

To simplify this, these CPU's were designed to have six working cores. Some ended up only having five working cores, which happens. They do have less cores than they were designed to have, and it's still a gimped chip that was binned for having a faulty core. I've never said these chips were faulty, by the way. So, I don't know what you're sighing about.

It may have been others on this thread that were making the same argument but using the “faulty” word.

The point is that there is nothing wrong with these chips for the purpose of which they are sold.

 

[unblocktheplane]

My heart bleeds for all those poor Apple shareholders! Rough times...

 

[iMac The Knife]

I may have been others on this thread that were making the same argument but using the “faulty” word.

The point is that there is nothing wrong with these chips for the purpose of which they are sold.

I'd appreciate not being brought in with "the others" on these replies. Again, I never said there was anything wrong with these chips for the purpose of which they are sold.

 

[Detnator]

To simplify this, these CPU's were designed to have six working cores. Some ended up only having five working cores, which happens. They do have less cores than they were designed to have, and it's still a gimped chip that was binned for having a faulty core. I've never said these chips were faulty, by the way. So, I don't know what you're sighing about.

My initial response to your previous post was going to be “whatever point you’re making, it’s not clear”. Then I decided to take a best guess at some of it, particularly the first sentence, which said:

There's a big difference between binning faulty chips/gpu's…

So in the context of what everyone is discussing in this thread, regardless of what side we’re on, and in the context of you using the word “faulty” there in response to someone who didn’t, and in this new context where you’ve chosen the word “gimped” (which in at least some dictionaries means “messed up” or “broken”) instead, specifically describing the Neo chips, it’s hard not to read what you’re saying as the Neo’s chip is “faulty”.

That’s said the crux of my response was about the “supposed/designed to have” part.

The point is: they are NOT “designed to have six cores”. They’re designed to have up to six cores. That is, they’re specifically designed to have and make full use of whatever core count they come out of the fabrication process with, up to a certain maximum, which in this case is six.

Saying it’s “supposed/designed to have” six cores, therefore it’s gimped if it doesn’t… well I don’t know, how else am I supposed to read that?

PS. Depending on your definition of “binned” they’re either all “binned” meaning they’re all (including the six core ones) put in different bins based on the number of functioning cores they have, or the ones that don’t wind up being used in any product are “binned” meaning thrown out, in which case these five-core ones were certainly not “binned” because they were used in fully functioning final products.

Now, if I am completely misinterpreting you then how about I go back to my initial reaction and just ask this: what are you actually is the point you were and are trying to make, (that’s different to my interpretation so far)?