Undoubtedly they did it for economics. Those chips with failed CPU/GPU cores can be used here rather than being discarded.
Sorting chips and binning is commonplace in the industry.
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iPad The new iPads have binned chips !
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Undoubtedly they did it for economics. Those chips with failed CPU/GPU cores can be used here rather than being discarded.
Sorting chips and binning is commonplace in the industry.
Those complaining about the iPad 11 are the same complaining about the iPhone 16e. The consumers who are buying these devices are not going to care one whit about the things being complained about.
Um my guess is there is even more people complaining about the iPad A16… you really think introducing an upgrade 2.5 years after with only an A16 chip (which is 2.5 years also) and 128gb of base storage is very innovative???
Oh and for the iPhone 16e I was complaining about the price since I wanted a new cheap secondary phone !
I sell these devices. The people buying them are not tech nerds. They just want the cheapest iPad and iPhone. Yes, the 16e should have been cheaper, but even so the vast majority of those buying it a will still go for the “cheapest” iPhone.
As for the iPad 11—a more powerful chip and 128gb base storage without an increase in price—thats a winner these buyers will appreciate.
All chips are absolutely binned because you don’t know what the chip is capable of until it goes through validation. I am a former Intel engineer and when CPUs are manufactured there is variability in the quality. Rather than throw away "defective" ones, you "bin" them into different performance categories. This has been standard practice for decades but YouTubers have misconstrued the term binning.
If a chip scores high on the test bench, then it goes into the top bin, next step down in performance goes in a different bin, and so on so chips don't get wasted unless they're defective beyond any practical value...but they're all essentially tested and binned into different performance envelopes.
Apple doesn't specifically order a 5-core variant of a chip. They design for 6-core for instance but not all manufactured chips will have all cores functional and it's expected some chips will have only 5 or 4 functional cores. It is common to actually design extra cores so you have higher probability of achieving your target 6-core goal. If Apple needs to adjust the product mix, then it's easier to disable a core and turn a 6-core into a 5-core, but you can't magically turn a 5-core into a functional 6-core.
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I complained about the 16e (basically due to pricing) but I'm more than fine with the iPad 11. The omissions don't bother me at all.
Who thinks that and why? The information isn’t hidden into some deep dark side of Apple’s website. It’s right there in the specs.
How do you know it’s actually slower? The iPad has 60hz display vs 120hz on iPhone 14 Pro, probably the iPad has worse colors too and no HDR support. Might even be that the iPad is faster than 14 Pro thanks to less needy screen.
Ah yes, the mighty extra core that’s 2-3 years older and slower too. Though older and slower might mean that it’s smarter too with all the extra old age knowledge, so might be the iPad 10 takes the win!
Flip side, you actually explained the process in some level of detail for those who don't know how CPU production works
You are right, unfortunately it's impossible to fix once a majority of people starts misusing a term. Happens all the time, "binning" is not the first example.
You are right about AI. Apple doesn't want the base iPad to be AI capable because Apple's primary way of planned obsolescence is limiting RAM so they can't give the base iPad 8GB.
Because it saves ressources and there won't be much useful Software on iPadOS that could make use of a faster processor anyway?
I would suggest that binned chips are more of a concern for iPads than they are for iPhone. Consider a game - on the iPad, you have the issue that you are trying to push to a higher resolution (with or without MetalFX) than the equivalent iphone, which demands more GPU grunt, but at the same time the iPad has less GPU cores overall.
From a business efficiency perspective, the way Apple is operating makes sense as all the binned chips still get to be used, reducing waste/increasing the yield of usable chips, but I would suggest it's not good from a consumer point of view: the lineup is more fragmented (the iPad lineup now uses 4 different generations of chip) and confusing (given the push Apple have been making with AI in their advertising in the last 6 months, wouldn't most non-techie consumers think all new Apple products would support it?), there are "hidden" details that the average consumer wouldn't know (such as reduced numbers of cores on some products) and it can create issues for Apple down the line where they have to make new OS releases support older chips that would normally be dropped, but were used in more recent budget devices" (e.g. the A9 iPad had to be supported years after the A9 iPhones lost support).
The only thing I don't understand is the lack of Apple Intelligence.
It took 3 years to refresh this iPad. Will it happen only in 2028 ?
I suspected they would push AI on all fronts, enable it in all their 2025 product lines. One can wonder : are they even serious about Apple Intelligence ? So far the software is deceiving, at least make the proper hardware and the software will be fixed eventually.
It took 3 years to refresh this iPad. Will it happen only in 2028 ?
I suspected they would push AI on all fronts, enable it in all their 2025 product lines. One can wonder : are they even serious about Apple Intelligence ? So far the software is deceiving, at least make the proper hardware and the software will be fixed eventually.
Apple does a lot of questionable things these days. Putting lesser chips in their lesser iPads is not one of them.
Sure it's faster, the two P-cores jump ahead two generations. That multi-threaded performance for more than five threads suffers from losing an E-core should not be too relevant to base-iPad use cases.
Making CPU’s is kinda like farming.
You harvest the crop and then grade what you have.
What would you propose they do with those chips?
You're not getting innovation for $349. What you're getting is a great tablet.