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Apple differentiates the majority of their products by generation rather than binning. If you buy a low-end iPad, you get an A12; the iPad Air steps you up to a

Apple differentiates the majority of their products by generation rather than binning. If you buy a low-end iPad, you get an A12; the iPad Air steps you up to an A14; and the iPad Pro gets you an M1. This is less evident on the Macintosh side of the business right now because they're just trying to get M1 silicon into as many product lines as their fab capacity will allow. They don't actually have an M2 (or even M1X) to sell high-end products with yet, which is why they're starting with low-end products first. When they release upgraded chips, they will almost be used to transition the high end models with lower-end product getting it later.

dehrmann 6y ago
> Apple differentiates the majority of their products by generation rather than binning. This simplifies things for consumers, but how do you make chips without binning? Are they all just that reliable? Do they all have extra cores? Maybe Intel bins more because they can squeeze out a significantly better price for more core and cache, but Apple's margins are already so high they don't care?
- DenseComet 6y ago
  It seems like they do binning. For example, the M1 with 7 gpu cores vs 8 gpu cores.
  - morpheuskafka 6y ago
    That struck me as an extremely odd metric to differentiate products by, given its low relevance to non-technical users who don't know what a GPU core even is (except gamers, but they are not buying iMacs). Additionally, most people are going to think adding one more core is hardly worth the price upgrade, and its quite strange to see an odd number of cores.
    - londons_explore 6y ago
      It will have a far greater than 1/8th performance impact. When data structures are power-of-two sizes, having 7 cores instead of 8 could halve performance, since the work gets split into 4 pieces and 3 cores sit idle.
      - rubatuga 6y ago
        GPU schedulers are much, much more advanced than you give credit.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      - Toutouxc 6y ago
        Nope, AFAIK the actual performance impact is < 10 % for most workloads.
        deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      - tobyhinloopen 6y ago
        Well GPU data structures aren’t always a power of two, right? There’s more than textures. For a fact, I know vertex count (vertex shaders?) and screen sizes (fragment shaders?) will rarely be exactly a power of two.
      - NavinF 6y ago
        Isn't false sharing (as in all your addresses hashing onto the same cache lines) still an issue for power-of-two sizes? You'd have to mess with padding to figure out what's fastest for each chip regardless of core count.
    - whizzter 6y ago
      Depends, remember that the 5nm processors overall are fairly new so we have no idea of yields. But if 1/5th of the processors are flawless, 1/5th have one faulty GPU and the rest have more errors (in either CPU or two or more GPU failures) then having twice the amount of CPU's available to sell (at a slightly lower pricepoint) might make perfect sense.
      - hajile 6y ago
        TSMC claimed last year that 5nm yields are better than 7nm. https://www.anandtech.com/show/16028/better-yield-on-5nm-than-7nm-tsmc-update-on-defect-rates-for-n5 https://www.anandtech.com/show/16028/better-yield-on-5nm-tha...
    - ksec 6y ago
      Apple dont bin them because of price / product differentiation as in Intel / AMD. Apple bin them only because of yield. I also think Apple doesn't want to use their M1 as differentiator. They use RAM and Storage instead which is an easier concept to grasp by consumers.
- isomorphic 6y ago
  I believe that Apple is effectively doing some binning with the M1: The intro MacBook Air has one less GPU core than the higher-config version or the MacBook Pro. It would make sense if those were identically-made M1s where one GPU core didn't test well and thus had its fuses blown. Between the CPU and GPU, the GPU cores are almost certainly larger anyway; the GPU cores would therefore have higher probability of defects.
  - londons_explore 6y ago
    It should be possible to identify this from infrared images of the cores in operation. If you find different sets of cores in use, you can be pretty sure it was binned...
- londons_explore 6y ago
  Binning requires more design work for the chip. I would guess the M1 was designed rapidly and probably they decided that hundreds of different bins for different types of defects wasn't worth the complexity if it meant delaying tape out for a few weeks. It also leads to extra product complexity (customers would be upset if some macbooks had hardware AES and others didn't, leading to some software being unusably slow seemingly at random).
  - pas 6y ago
    > I would guess the M1 was designed rapidly How rapidly? And so how come it has such spectacular performance? Or the shortcomings of the x86 arch were so, so soooo obvious, but nobody had the resources to reaaallly give a go to a modern arch? Or maybe, simply the requirements were a lot more exact/concrete and clear? (But the M1 performs well in general, no?)
- saagarjha 6y ago
  Apple has always binned; they just don’t publicly announce it all the time. For example, iPod Touch has been historically underclocked compared to the equivalent chip in iPhone or iPad.
- kmeisthax 6y ago
  So, there are a few instances where Apple does bin their products: 1. "7-core GPU" M1 Macs, which have one of the eight GPU cores disabled for yield 2. The A12X, which also had one GPU core disabled (which was later shipped in an 8-core GPU configuration for the A12Z) 3. iPod Touch, which uses lower-clocked A10 chips It's not like Apple is massively overbuilding their chips or has a zero defect rate. It's more that Intel is massively overbinning their chips for product segmentation purposes. Defect rates rarely, if ever, fit a nice product demand curve. You'll wind up producing too many good chips and not enough bad ones, and this will get worse as your yields improve. Meanwhile, the actual demand curve means that you'll sell far more cheap CPUs than expensive ones. So in order to meet demand you have to start turning off or limiting perfectly working hardware in order to make a worse product. Apple doesn't have to do this because they're vertically integrated. The chip design part of the business doesn't have to worry about maximizing profit on individual designs - they just have to make the best chip they can within the cost budget of the business units they serve. So the company as a whole can afford to differentiate products by what CPU design you're getting, rather than what hardware has been turned off. Again, they aren't generating that many defects to begin with, and old chips are going to have better yields and cost less to make anyway. It makes more sense for Apple to leave a bit of money on the table at the middle of the product stack and charge more for other, more obviously understandable upgrades (e.g. more RAM or storage) at the high end instead.

dehrmann 6y ago

> Apple differentiates the majority of their products by generation rather than binning. This simplifies things for consumers, but how do you make chips without binning? Are they all just that reliable? Do they all have extra cores? Maybe Intel bins more because they can squeeze out a significantly better price for more core and cache, but Apple's margins are already so high they don't care?

DenseComet 6y ago
It seems like they do binning. For example, the M1 with 7 gpu cores vs 8 gpu cores.
- morpheuskafka 6y ago
  That struck me as an extremely odd metric to differentiate products by, given its low relevance to non-technical users who don't know what a GPU core even is (except gamers, but they are not buying iMacs). Additionally, most people are going to think adding one more core is hardly worth the price upgrade, and its quite strange to see an odd number of cores.
  - londons_explore 6y ago
    It will have a far greater than 1/8th performance impact. When data structures are power-of-two sizes, having 7 cores instead of 8 could halve performance, since the work gets split into 4 pieces and 3 cores sit idle.
    - rubatuga 6y ago
      GPU schedulers are much, much more advanced than you give credit.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - Toutouxc 6y ago
      Nope, AFAIK the actual performance impact is < 10 % for most workloads.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
    - tobyhinloopen 6y ago
      Well GPU data structures aren’t always a power of two, right? There’s more than textures. For a fact, I know vertex count (vertex shaders?) and screen sizes (fragment shaders?) will rarely be exactly a power of two.
    - NavinF 6y ago
      Isn't false sharing (as in all your addresses hashing onto the same cache lines) still an issue for power-of-two sizes? You'd have to mess with padding to figure out what's fastest for each chip regardless of core count.
  - whizzter 6y ago
    Depends, remember that the 5nm processors overall are fairly new so we have no idea of yields. But if 1/5th of the processors are flawless, 1/5th have one faulty GPU and the rest have more errors (in either CPU or two or more GPU failures) then having twice the amount of CPU's available to sell (at a slightly lower pricepoint) might make perfect sense.
    - hajile 6y ago
      TSMC claimed last year that 5nm yields are better than 7nm. https://www.anandtech.com/show/16028/better-yield-on-5nm-than-7nm-tsmc-update-on-defect-rates-for-n5 https://www.anandtech.com/show/16028/better-yield-on-5nm-tha...
  - ksec 6y ago
    Apple dont bin them because of price / product differentiation as in Intel / AMD. Apple bin them only because of yield. I also think Apple doesn't want to use their M1 as differentiator. They use RAM and Storage instead which is an easier concept to grasp by consumers.
isomorphic 6y ago
I believe that Apple is effectively doing some binning with the M1: The intro MacBook Air has one less GPU core than the higher-config version or the MacBook Pro. It would make sense if those were identically-made M1s where one GPU core didn't test well and thus had its fuses blown. Between the CPU and GPU, the GPU cores are almost certainly larger anyway; the GPU cores would therefore have higher probability of defects.
- londons_explore 6y ago
  It should be possible to identify this from infrared images of the cores in operation. If you find different sets of cores in use, you can be pretty sure it was binned...
londons_explore 6y ago
Binning requires more design work for the chip. I would guess the M1 was designed rapidly and probably they decided that hundreds of different bins for different types of defects wasn't worth the complexity if it meant delaying tape out for a few weeks. It also leads to extra product complexity (customers would be upset if some macbooks had hardware AES and others didn't, leading to some software being unusably slow seemingly at random).
- pas 6y ago
  > I would guess the M1 was designed rapidly How rapidly? And so how come it has such spectacular performance? Or the shortcomings of the x86 arch were so, so soooo obvious, but nobody had the resources to reaaallly give a go to a modern arch? Or maybe, simply the requirements were a lot more exact/concrete and clear? (But the M1 performs well in general, no?)
saagarjha 6y ago
Apple has always binned; they just don’t publicly announce it all the time. For example, iPod Touch has been historically underclocked compared to the equivalent chip in iPhone or iPad.
kmeisthax 6y ago
So, there are a few instances where Apple does bin their products: 1. "7-core GPU" M1 Macs, which have one of the eight GPU cores disabled for yield 2. The A12X, which also had one GPU core disabled (which was later shipped in an 8-core GPU configuration for the A12Z) 3. iPod Touch, which uses lower-clocked A10 chips It's not like Apple is massively overbuilding their chips or has a zero defect rate. It's more that Intel is massively overbinning their chips for product segmentation purposes. Defect rates rarely, if ever, fit a nice product demand curve. You'll wind up producing too many good chips and not enough bad ones, and this will get worse as your yields improve. Meanwhile, the actual demand curve means that you'll sell far more cheap CPUs than expensive ones. So in order to meet demand you have to start turning off or limiting perfectly working hardware in order to make a worse product. Apple doesn't have to do this because they're vertically integrated. The chip design part of the business doesn't have to worry about maximizing profit on individual designs - they just have to make the best chip they can within the cost budget of the business units they serve. So the company as a whole can afford to differentiate products by what CPU design you're getting, rather than what hardware has been turned off. Again, they aren't generating that many defects to begin with, and old chips are going to have better yields and cost less to make anyway. It makes more sense for Apple to leave a bit of money on the table at the middle of the product stack and charge more for other, more obviously understandable upgrades (e.g. more RAM or storage) at the high end instead.